Here is my response to the feedback I received on “Four Slides on Stock vs. Authentic Images”:

New	Old

or this version:

Version Two	Version Three

I want to thank the following commenters for their feedback:

Tom Woodward at Bionic Teaching for suggesting the cake scenario.

Mathew Needleman at Creating Lifelong Learners for suggesting keeping the rose photos, but chopping down the amount of text.

Ian H. at Marturia.net for suggesting the Bonsai.

oh, and thanks to  Dan for starting this whole thing 🙂

Well, I’ve posted up on Picking Up The Gauntlet at dy/dan and gotten no response. Perhaps folks really don’t want to weed though a 45-60 minute preso to see if my slides and audio go well together, so in the interest of getting feed back, here is a shorter bit:

These slides all come from a recent presentation on presentations I did for my district.

First up, the next two slides are part of a section on simplifying what you ask for from kids in their presentations and multi-media reports. I start with this image:

then this one as a contrast:

Now, the interesting thing is sometimes I get a response from folks indicating they prefer the second image. This could be that their taste is all in their mouth. There is a whole industry of lawn gnome sculpture built around this particular taste, but maybe they like an overgrown cottage garden, and loathe the symmetry and perfection of the single rose image. It’s just too slick for them. I realize this is an argument going back to the Romantic Movement, and has probably never ended.

So I think the first slide shows where I might have slipped up by being “too slick” Both slides were from flickr cc, and I think this was a pretty appropriate source for an image about the topic, I just might have made a better selection in the case of the first one.

Now, in the next pair, I took the opposite view, and “created” my own. I used this first image to show the “rule of thirds”:

This is from a picture of my son, Leroy. My poor family gets to be “subjects” for a lot of my work. Now, this is NOT a perfect rule of thirds photo, but it let me point out what would have made it perfect (his eye hitting that first “power point”, his mouth at the second), without intimidating the bejeezuz out of my audience. In comparison, we have this:

I was generously offered an example like this from Six Minutes Blog , but eschewed it. I didn’t realize it at the time, but it was probably the right choice because it’s almost too perfect.

Links

Picking Up The Gauntlet
Dan’s post where volunteers put up their work

My examples offered for critique

Blogging in Elementary
Tech in Tutoring
On PowerPoint

Just One Example: Stock Photography
The post on Dy/Dan that got it started

Here was my entry to Film on the Fly Pi Day:

Others can be found at: http://filmonthefly.ning.com/video/pi-day

This is a combo post reflecting on what I’ve been reading on edublogs, AND what I’ve been doing in the lab lately…

First, revisiting the thorny issue of assessment…

Sherman Dorn: UTLA and “benchmark” or “periodic” testing had this great post on assessment where he argued for more formative (informal, observational, feedback) assessment. I’ve shared my opinion that formative assessment is better than summative, and portfolios are better than standardized tests. I also talked about how workers are assessed based on my experience, and my interview with my bil. Word now comes that businesses are rethinking “once a year” assessment, Companies Rethink Annual Performance Reviews : NPR. These may not be the same corporate types that have fallen in love with “school accountability” in the form of testing, but if businesses prefer what we would call formative assessment (referred to as feedback in this piece), why shouldn’t schools?

Another lovely piece, hyper(con)text: an allusion is a link, but a link is not an allusion at Higher Edison discusses both hypertext as allusion, but in the context of traditional teaching of classics to build a background to understand allusions in other works. Scott’s point? This older practice of teaching classics, to build a context to understand allusions in great works builds thinking in a way that handing an allusion to someone on a silver platter doesn’t. Then into my reader pops, Now That’s Leverage < Do I Dare Disturb the Universe? where another Scott argues for learning about books by doing a version of a jigsaw, where each student takes a part of the reading, then reports out to the group giving a summary. So you read your book, but not all the books, but everyone at least gets a summary of the other books they didn’t read. They use Google to share the summaries and information (that’s the new part). I had suggested in my comments to Higher Edison that I thought the method of studying classics,  is good, but I think it’s rapidly becoming harder and harder to read all the “classics”, and having someone else give you the summary, and point out the allusions, is fine, as long as you know how to do this yourself. You may not be able to do it for all the classics, but you do have a chance at doing some of them. To me, learning how to do the thinking and analysis, is more important that the knowledge of it all.

Okay, enough of the grown-up stuff, here’s what’s new with the kids. I’ve started using the “threaded” comments option on Edublogs, and BOY IS IT WORTH IT! Here is an example, from my first stab at this with sixth graders:

Assignment #18: What Works in Oak Park | Sixth Grade Blog

julie x.

What I think, is going right in Oak Park is at school.
At school, they have nice things, they treat people nicely, and all kind of things. The thing that needs my need is my family. My family can’t live without me because they need me. I would never let my family down. This is what I think about needs, and what is nice.

• elizabethv Reply:
  February 13th, 2009 at 8:46 ami think you are right about what you have said.But it was very good and i would think about it sometimes.
• Xian L. Reply:
  February 13th, 2009 at 9:32 amGreat job Julie, but I think you should add more detail on your school.

for 25 years of interesting conversations…

for 21 years of marriage, the caring, the laughter…

for 51 years of bringing a smile to the faces of friends and family…

for your birthday wish that came true for both of us 11 years ago…

for 7 years of being cancer-free…

and, for the years ahead, whatever they may bring, I know you’ll greet them with a smile.