Our Family Learning Blog
Marco Torres took some AMAZING photos yesterday and today, when we were able to have dinner and hang out with some other great Maine educators. These are a few of my favorites, see more in his October 2009 Flickr set. My photos from today are also available in a Flickr set. 🙂
Sarah recorded these thoughts in the Baltimore airport enroute to New Hampshire and the ACTEM conference in Maine.
This video was shot with an iPhone GS and uploaded via email to Flickr. Mobile blogged with WordPress for iPhone.
One of our favorite October traditions here in central Oklahoma is going to “Fright Night” at Frontier City, a theme park located on I-35 in Edmond. Generally we go later in the month, but this year we needed to go early because of travel schedules. As usual we had a great time, especially watching the show, “Dead Man’s Party.” In the third video below, you’ll see Sarah get up on stage and dance as the construction worker in the song “YMCA” by The Village People. We stayed and danced after the 2nd show– we actually saw it three times! This was a lot of fun! It’s also great that when you order your tickets to Frontier City online in October, they are half price. It’s still expensive at $17.50 each, but much less than “normal” price.
Each of these videos is 90 seconds long, which is the maximum length permitted by Flickr. Some of these songs and the acting in the performance was a little scary, but “a little scary” in moderation can be fun and even healthy. It’s definitely a lot of fun to have a chance to dance like this as a family. We don’t get these opportunities very often!
I shot these videos with my iPhone GS. I apologize for the distortion in the audio at some points. The sound was definitely VERY loud where we were sitting!
This visit to “Fright Night” marked the first time both Sarah and Rachel chose to ride a rollercoaster! We actually all rode the “Steel Lasso” three times, and it was a lot of fun. This was the photo of Rachel and Mom on their last ride. Rachel was pretty excited by the experience!
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city, edmond, family, fun, oklahoma, frontier, october, fright, night, rollercoaster, halloween
At my school in english are curriculum is The Lord of the Rings and we just read the part when they meet Tom Bombadil in the Fellowship of the Ring. We had to do a project on one of the scenes and make a miniature on it, I did the scene when they looked into their room at Tom Bombadil's house. This is the passage describing the scene and pictures of my project are at the bottom so you can see how I did:
Its walls were of clean stone, but they were mostly covered with green hanging mats and yellow curtains. The floor was flagged, and strewn with fresh, green rushes. There were four deep mattresses, each piled with white blankets, laid on the floor along one side. Against the opposite wall was a long bench laden with wide earthenware basins, and beside it stood brown ewers filled with water, some cold, some steaming hot. There were soft green slippers set ready beside each bed.
I’m doing a survey for math and my survey is on What Is your favorite Girl Scout Cookie. I thought it would be cool if I could see the worlds point of view. The different kinds for my survey are Tagalong; Thin Mint; Trefoil; Samoa; Lemon Creme and Dosidos. I’m a junior Girl Scout. I have been in girl scouting since Kindergarten or a Daisy. If you have any questions about the taste of the cookies or if you have any questions about anything please feel free to leave a comment.
6 year old Rachel did a good job “explaining creativity” as part of the Storychasing Creativity project this week. Nice work, Rachel! 🙂
Technorati Tags:
creativity, video, youtube
For fall break I’m going to Maine! I’m going to Augusta,Maine. here are some links.
For Augusta, Maine:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusta,_Maine
for the conference:
http://www.actem.org
I thought I’d share the video “The Secret Behind The Real-Time Web,” which is a lego stopmotion video I encountered today thanks to Alan Levine.
I’ve always wondered how all these things are getting posted to the web so regularly… now I know. 😉
Technorati Tags:
lego, stopmotion
Wow. I had no idea Sarah’s YouTube-posted response to President Obama’s speech would receive such a response. In the 35 hours that have passed since we posted this online, it’s been viewed over 26,000 times, commented on over 350 times, rated over 600 times. And we’re not even 2 days out. Here are the current “honors” given by YouTube, it’s a top “education” category video in over 20 countries presently.
Thank GOODNESS I chose to moderate comments on this video. Good grief there are some heartless folks out there, commenting on YouTube. I’ve tried to filter just those comments which use profanity or are disparaging. I let some of the critical comments through too, if they weren’t too critical of Sarah directly. It’s good to see many people commenting in her defense in those cases.
At some point I may turn commenting off for this video, but for now we’ll let it ride. Is this a good idea to have put Sarah on YouTube? Bad things can certainly happen that are tied to the Internet, but overall I think predator danger fears are overblown.
Will Oprah see this video and want to interview Sarah? Will NewsOK? Will President Obama see it? Who knows… It is great so many people have watched it, and so many have left edifying and supportive comments. In moderating those comments, I’m affirmed more than ever that we are on a holy mission in education, and our work is SO important. In addition to helping people learn FACTS and IDEAS, we also must help others learn RESPECT and understanding. It’s really sad to see how cruel and mean some people can be. Thank goodness for comment moderation!
Technorati Tags:
obama, response, speech, student, video, youtube
Alexander: Since you were not able to join Sarah and I to watch President Obama’s speech today “live,” I’d like you to watch the speech and then compose a response you can either post here on Learning Signs, record as a video on YouTube, or record as an audio message via AudioBoo. Let me know if you need help with either option 2 or 3. 🙂
Also check out Sarah’s response, and the comments others have left for her there. She may need to record a follow-up video to answer some of those questions!
Since Sarah’s 4th grade teacher chose NOT to show President Obama’s speech during class today, I (dad) pulled her out of class so we could watch it at home on CSPAN and participate in a live-blog “backchannel” with students in Littleton, Colorado. You can view the archive chat there on their classroom blog, “East Dragon Den.”
This is Sarah’s two-minute recorded response today to President Obama’s speech, posted to YouTube.
In the embed code I’ve chosen to NOT include “related” videos.
Technorati Tags:
education, obama, speech, video, youtube, @studentresponse09
Cross-posted to Moving at the Speed of Creativity, linked from the International Cooking Show project wiki.
Sarah recorded a 6 min, 43 second episode for “The International Cooking Show” tonight and made Black Bean Dip. This is usually served as an appetizer, but we ate this tonight for our dinner.
We need some other participants to make this project truly an “international cooking show” rather than the “Oklahoma cooking show!”
I recorded episode 1 with my Sony GSC-1 Netsharing Cam (flash-based camcorder) in multiple takes. Sarah edited that episode herself with iMovie ’09. We recorded this episode all in one take, using an iPhone 3GS, and uploaded it directly to YouTube with the free application PixelPipe. For some reason the iPhone’s built-in upload to YouTube feature kept timing out, but PixelPipe worked like a charm.
Great work Sarah! Woo hoo! 🙂
Technorati Tags:
tutorial, video, youtube, cooking, cook, recipe, dip, black, bean, howto, diy
Alexander, Sarah and Rachel: I want you to each select at least three VoiceThreads from this classroom in Canada (page 1 and page 2) and leave thoughtful feedback / comments for the authors. I don’t want you to just say something like, “That was great.” Really listen to what they said in their presentation, and make some observations or suggestions based on your knowledge of the topic or what you think about after hearing their reports.
Let me know if you need help logging into our VoiceThread account. Alternatively, we can setup VoiceThread accounts for each of you to have independently. Let me know what you want to do.
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canada, voicethread, assignment
I’m starting the 4th grade this year. I love my teacher she’s so fun and creative. I can’t wait to see what this week has in store. My favorite subject is social studies. I go to school from 8:30-3:05. We have lunch at 12:20! 12:20 is very late for me because in 3rd grade we ate at 11:40. But the good thing is that now we can bring a snack. Which is a great thing. I’m a morning helper in Mrs. Attebery’s classroom. So that means in the morning I go down to her classroom and help her unstack chairs and help her with any other stuff she needs help with.
