The Blog of Ms. Mercer

For the Passion Quilt meme by Scott McLeod. Here is my entry…

The inspiration was a photo from the CARF (Children at Risk Foundation) photostream on Flickr, and plagiarizing from Unitarians. The above photo was titled limitless personality, which says a lot.
I’m going to leave it up to my readers to participate in this if they [...]

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Dan Myer dy/dan » Blog Archive » Sinister Storytelling takes on criticism from Tom Hoffman about the recent Annual Report contest, and whether it’s about storytelling, or merely marketing. He feels that trying to ape corporations with our personal reports will lead something less than substantive.
So which is it?

A mere means of pushing a product.
or, [...]

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This thread will be about reflections on “Design Matters” and practices in my classroom. Before looking forward on what I need to change, I wanted to look at my current practices to see what is working, and what needs adjustment.
First, I am teaching my students about design:
[slideshare id=120052&doc=layout-designss4573&w=425]
This has already been shown to sixth graders [...]

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Quote of the week:
“There is no “instructional plan” by design since Papert and others involved in the vision behind OLPC do not believe that learning results from an emphasis on instruction.
http://www.papert.org/articles/const_inst/const_inst1.html”
- Quote from Gary Stager, Ph.D. Wes Fryer’s Speed of Creativity blog about my comment on OLPC
“Well, that’s a nice theory, but frankly, [...]

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I was asked to create a PowerPoint to show off what I’m doing in the computer lab to parents. There is a ~monthly meeting the principal has with parents. I said I thought I could do a short video (2 minutes) about as easily as the PowerPoint.
Rather than start work on that over break, I [...]

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I added a slide on blog stats. I hesitated to do that earlier because really, who brags about a Technorati rating of 31? but I think the text adds context positing that this is just a beginning (and therefore more respectable). Graham Wegner did a similar thing with his golf scores on his last slide.
I’m [...]

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Dy/Dan is running a annual report contest, which I am participating in. I was one of the first entrants (I’m that way, finishing stuff quickly, then second guessing what I’ve done).
Before I start on this, I may not be the best entrant, but I’m guessing I’ll be the only to have actually done work [...]

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Like the last Dy/Dan contest, I did another version. This one follows the rules and looks more like the examples provided by Dan and company:

Frankly, I could have spent more time tweaking this and that. I considered creating my own graphics to show how my use of paper had decreased with paper ream and box [...]

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Here is my entry in Dy/Dan’s Annual Report contest…
Video:

Annual Report Final PPT with Narration notes
And just the jpegs:

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Download Video: Posted by mizmercer at TeacherTube.com./code>
I may update one of the sections (language) with Hmong ( I need to get a translation at work).

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