ME+Meeting+Notes

Present: Kipp (Penobscot East), Emily, Anne, Lee, Tasha, Katy, Linda Weed, Linda N., Susan Linda N. introduced Kipp and purpose of her work with the teachers and integration with Juneau teaching artist Ryan Connaro’s work on interviewing and scriptwriting. a) Need more Garage Band. Simplify it. Steps to record; modify; and adding it to images. b)  More content to review than time allowed, too much time on iPhoto with which people were more familiar. Participants were frustrated with slide show about photography. First “show-you” was too long: need shorter “show you” portions and then get hands-on c) Sheridan is terrific. a)  Import GarageBand files into iPhoto and iMovie. For those interested, be sure they know how to save GarageBand file as a Podcast. b) iMovie. Skip importing, teachers will come with video on laptops. Get right to editing and laying in sound, titles, etc. Exporting as file to post online. a)  Wait until next semester, early February; do digital storytelling, and communicate with Alaska. Tasha’s group has already started doing this, to answer KWLs. Includes drawing, photography, environmental info, etc. b) Katy is thinking about “cabinet of curiosities” for her Alaska project in the fall; plus printmaking about birds on the island a)  Have tried to contact Alaska and haven’t heard anything yet—need feedback! Have tried iChats, etc. Kids are ready to go with it and excitement is there, need to keep it going. Need to double check email list. . . b) Emily’s and Tasha’s classes are going to start talking with each other via iChat to practice using it. They are excited. c)  Content: for now, teachers can just focus on digital storytelling to share with Alaska, not worry about collecting info for final project until they work with Ryan. Essentially any place-based projects, integrated with your curricula goals, with a built-in audience on the other side of the continent. What we have in common: fisheries. Different species, different conservation of resources, etc. We both have tourism; does Juneau have summer residents (land use)? how many families are engaged here in fisheries? There? Is this something CREST has captured? Need teachers to connect from one place to the other so there can be shared curricula topics. d) Kipp’s suggestions, on basis of her work with Ted Ames in extracting scientific info from oral histories: Narrowly define the focus, set the goals and have the kids do their homework first so they are prepared with good questions and follow up. One possible focus is change: ask questions about what changes have happened in the fishery. Or interview several different fishermen and start to notice and ask about the differences; or ask fishermen from different locations and compare differences; or young fisherman and old fisherman, etc. **PROJECT TEAM MEETINGS ARE ALL 2ND MONDAY OF MONTH** **NEXT TEAM MEETING IS MONDAY JAN 11, 2010**
 * Alaska Project Team Meeting Dec 14, 2009**
 * 1. ****Reflections on recent professional development workshop with Sheridan Kelley**
 * 2. ****Confirmation of next workshop session date and time (iMovie 2 hours Dec 18, 3-5);**
 * 3. ****Classroom-based digital media arts projects with Sheridan support:**
 * 4. ****Review of projects happening or planned, including what is happening in Alaska**
 * 5. ****Dates for the interviewing/writing professional development segment with Ryan Connaro**
 * a) **April 17-23 is spring break and before vacation is better. March is full of activities and testing. **Best dates are March 19-21** for workshop, and then week of support beginning March 22; or March 26-28 for workshop with week following. Of these two, March 19-21 is the best for everyone.

11/17/09**
 * Minutes from Videoconference – Alaska and Maine!

Note for the Maine team: Regularmeetings are now scheduled to be the second Monday of every month: December 14; January 11; February 8

In attendance ME: Anne Douglass (enrichment), Emily Wendell (4th), Tasha Brown (4th), Susan Guilford (library), Lee Lehto (high school English), Linda Weed (5th), Judith Jerome (OH); In attendance AK: Nancy Peel (5th), Florence McFarlin (4th-5th), Kathleen Galau (high school science), Jan Niemeyer (high school technology), Kim Frangos (4th), Geri McLeod (extended learning), (high school art), (high school English), Sheridan Kelley (teaching artist) · Sheridan: people in AK are really interested in small collaborative ideas for this first year. Do people have ideas? · Sheridan showed AK teachers ichat. Is this the format we want to use to get kids talking to each other? Anne Douglas also suggests Tokbox, which can link multiple users simultaneously, though Sheridan doesn’t think the MAC supports it. All are concerned about parents who worry about their kids online. Sheridan says that ichat can be limited to the classroom. · What is the best method for teacher to teacher to sharing? Ichat, email, wiki? Linda Weed syas that she is most comfortable with email. Others agree. · How do send the student documents already created (letters, biographies, etc)? Scan them and email? Mail hardcopy? · Introductions, kids to kids o Linda Weed’s kids are writing letters, with their questions, to their AK counterparts o Nancy Peel is creating an iphoto slide show to answer some of those questions. Many challenges but she hopes to get it to ME shortly o One class of 4-5 graders wrote biographies of another person in their class; they are going to send these to ME o  Anne Douglass took a GoogleEarth tour to AK with her enrichment kids; they were able to see the school in Juneau · AK marine ecology study: grades 4-5 are basing this around the salmon. Each class will approach it through another marine animal: sea otter, killer whale, and stellar sea lion (see GV notes on Wiki). Students have visited a processing plant and · AK high school students from digital arts class documented their visit. See Wiki for photos. The high school and elementary students are getting to know each other as this proceeds; it’s a good collaboration. · The 4-5 students will document their research in some yet-to-be-determined format and share it with MR kids. **The motivating factor is they will have an audience to present the work to.** · Emily will make a short podcast of her kids introducing themselves to send to AK. Not sure how she will send? · Kathleen (I think it was) will do some GIS arcmaps of the region and post these on the wiki. · Exchange class lists. · AK high school art teacher met with high school teachers to brainstorm ideas. One idea is to collect the artifacts that other classes are producing (letters, photos, biographies etc) and use these in design elements study; collage these with artifacts from ME. Also maybe a collaborative art project with these same objects. They will start in January, next semester, but **would like to start getting materials now so they are ready to start in January**. (For Lee, too, it might make more sense to start next semester. She has a creative writing class—which would be onboard from the beginning.) <span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol; msobidifontfamily: Symbol; msofareastfontfamily: Symbol; msolist: Ignore;">· Add a Flicker site to the Wiki, for much easier viewing of photos. Linda Nelson has an account we can use. Sheridan will set up a video account so that we can also post video to Wiki. <span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol; msobidifontfamily: Symbol; msofareastfontfamily: Symbol; msolist: Ignore;">· Anne will work with a few kids to follow up on GoogleEarth flyover: kids will narrate the story of our island as GoogleEarth tours it. They could show their houses, the fish pier, etc. She is not sure she completely knows the technology to do this, but is going to work on it. <span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol; msobidifontfamily: Symbol; msofareastfontfamily: Symbol; msolist: Ignore;">· Lee’s sophomores are doing autobiographical writing; one piece has to be on the Island. She will send these. <span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol; msobidifontfamily: Symbol; msofareastfontfamily: Symbol; msolist: Ignore;">· AK high school English: Her kids produce local NPR pieces, work on interviewing techniques. She could put some of these, general things about the local community on the Wiki. <span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol; msobidifontfamily: Symbol; msofareastfontfamily: Symbol; msolist: Ignore;">· AK high school science (Kathleen) has access to many native Alaskan’s; would like to get English students to interview some of these on fisheries topics. <span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol; msobidifontfamily: Symbol; msofareastfontfamily: Symbol; msolist: Ignore;">· Lee sees how she could perhaps coordinate this kind of thing with Seth. AK high school classes are similar to ME – kids are not necessarily shared, and they change semester to semester. But many of these things can stand alone. Seth has environmental science course next semester—so might really work.
 * I didn’t get all of the Alaska participants and would be very happy to have an updated list of all who were there, including some who are not on our contact list. A lot was going on and I don’t, also, have all of the names attributed to the right person. Also project details may be wonky. PLEASE CORRECT. There was so much good stuff flying around! **
 * Report on Sheridan’s workshop in AK:** They worked on imovie, photoshop, and garageband. The intent was to get all comfortable enough with these programs to use them with students. Now she is working with grades 4-5 to find formats to answer ME kids’ questions.
 * Questions raised:**
 * What we are already doing:**
 * What we plan to do:**
 * What we maybe plan to do:**

Quotes of the meeting: “Kids really want to communicate with kids.” “The motivating factor is they will have an audience to present the research to.” “The best way to get the big picture is on the Wiki. We just need to get more used to it.”
 * “**We meet and never have clear next steps. Can we come up with this right now? (But this was left dangling . . .)

Minutes from Alaska-Maine Project Team Meeting Monday, October 26, 2009 The group had a discussion regarding the shape, timing, and content of the professional development workshop with Sheridan. We are budgeted for 2 workshop days: Saturdays or long afternoons? Sheridan is flexible. It is possible to hold a half or full day workshop and then have Sheridan support classroom work, and then do the second workshop day. Linda Weed suggests for 5th grade: come in every day at same time to create consistency, that works great for the students. Sheridan reviewed WikiSpaces with Maine team: logging on, posting to discussion board, photos, uploading documents. Team members were urged to communicate via the discussion board, so that other teachers can see what is being done; and to create email alerts for pages in which they are interested, so they will get an email when new content is posted. Several ideas: create pages by grade, etc., so members can post like material to like, and can easily search for content. And: “This is where a sort of a naming strategy might start to be useful. . . “ (Sheridan) ** __Next Meeting: Tuesday, November 17 at 3.__ Video conference with Sheridan and team in Alaska! The Maine team hopes by moving the meeting to Tuesday to include art teacher Debbie Chappell, who might be able/willing to create some art for this project in collaboration with the classroom teachers. The Deer Isle-Stonington K-8 school wide theme this year is “North of 60 Degrees.” We determined that Juneau is at 58’ and several seconds—close enough! ** Type in the content of your page here.
 * Present:** Linda Nelson, Anne Douglass, Linda Weed, Sheridan Kelley, Emily Mueller, Sheridan Kelley, Judith Jerome, Mike Benjamin
 * News and Activities: **
 * Tasha’s 4th grade KLM was sent to Alaska . . . Linda Weed did one with the 5th grade which she will type up and send directly—posting on the Wiki!
 * Emily (4th grade) talked with students about things they might want to research and communicate about the island . . . they are very interested in putting together a skit that would be video taped. . . Fish Creek exists in both places . . . students want to talk with students. Emily showed them photos of fish hatchery in Juneau, and students said: “That’s not Alaska, there’s no snow!”
 * Tasha’s students are studying personal narratives this year, and she took them on Juneau’s Arts and Education First site with kids . . . they liked the short videos that are posted there, thought that was a great way to communicate. They are very eager to start being in touch directly via computer. “Even though they are going to learn a lot about Alaska, I think these kids know so little about their own lives and will learn so much about life here through doing this,” Tasha said.
 * Anne has been working with students on Google Earth and will create small presentations that these students can then bring to the different classrooms. They mapped the statehouse; they want to find where the school is . . . and they want to be able to how where they each live here on Deer Isle. It is possible to videotape a tour that can be replayed . ..
 * Shape, timing, and content of first professional development workshop in digital media arts: **
 * If goal is to teach students to create small podcasts, then what order might you want training in? Emily suggests training ASAP; then can take time to do research and collect materials; then Sheridan can come in for week of classroom support.
 * Sheridan suggests 1.5 hour slots for how to make a video and post online; then how to make a podcast and put online; etc. In addition, discuss ideas for how to use the programs within the project, and collaborations between here and Alaska. Tasha notes it would be great to get an intro to the technology and options, and then see how the students want to use it: keep students empowered in this project by allowing them to make their own project/media choice ..
 * Emily’s kids want to do a skit and video; then another class wants to do podcasts—can this work for workshops?
 * Linda Weed suggests getting set up so that the students who have deep roots can then take photos of the boats, island, etc. History, biography, interviews . ..
 * **Based on the above, suggestions for** Workshop content: iMovie; Garage Band; photo/slide show software and some kind of collaboration/communication information.
 * Workshop: First weekend in December: December 5. Start with 1.5 hour Friday afternoon Dec 4, after school; then do 2 1.5 hour sessions on Saturday 9 – 1. Then have follow up
 * Mini workshop on WikiSpaces **