Digital Stories from KIPP Bay Area Schools:

More KIPP Bay Area digital stories can be found on Streetside Stories' YouTube channel.

Looking for More Professional Development

Are you looking for more professional development? Check out these opportunities...

MacWorld for Educators, Jan. 5-9, 2009 in San Francisco (Moscone Center)

TRLD Conference (Tech, Reading & Learning Diversity)
Jan. 22-24, 2009 - Hyatt Regency in San Francisco

Also, you might be interested in a membership ($40 per individual) from Computer Using Educators. They have a local East Bay affiliate too, EBCUE, which offers grant funding for technology tools that enhance innovative, student-centered projects that are aligned with California Content Standards. http://www.ebcue.org/grants.htm

Generation M: Media in the Lives of 8-18 Year-olds

Curious to know how much time your students really spend on the computer, the internet and playing video games? Check out this article in Edutopia about media in the lives of youth and the importance of media literacy skills.
http://www.edutopia.org/media-literacy-skills

The article references a 2005 study called Generation M: Media in the Lives of 8-18 Year-olds.

Cool Tip: Trouble with movie file formats?

Do you sometimes have trouble playing certain movie files on your Mac, especially if they were originally created on a Windows machine? According to PowerMax, there are two free utilities that allow QuickTime to play a host of video formats:

• Perian
  The Swiss Army Knife for QuickTime
  (requires Mac OS X 10.4.7 or higher)
• Flip4Mac
  WMV Plug-in component for QuickTime
  (requires Mac OS X 10.3.9 or higher)

They suggest you download both utilities, which supposedly work great and are easy to install.

PowerMax is an authorized Apple Reseller and has a section on their website with relevant articles.



http://www.powermax.com/articles

I Stopped Drawing When I Realized "I Didn't Know How to Draw"

We give our young people plenty of opportunities to write during their 13 years of primary schooling. They write their names. They write sentences. They fill in blanks with words.

No matter what the writing we give them opportunity and techniques to practice.

Not so for drawing. So when we ask our young people to create with images they rely on their own knowledge and experimentation, unless they are lucky enough to have an instructor guide them with techniques to practice.

Fast forward to my working with teachers...these same students have grown up into talented adults who disparage their own art creation...because they haven't been given techniques to practice...and so they are self-conscious about their art...

HAVE NO FEAR! Creativity can be CULTIVATED and taught! You may not feel like DaVinci, but you can share making and using shapes, shading, perspective, colours, and placement to create images.

You also can play with photography where your art direction determines the image and the technology "draws" it for you.

There are lots of resources on the web to teach drawing for (you)th.

Explore for yourself and be okay with making messy projects or projects you don't deem successful. It's practice and helps you build your skillset. Then share your work and techniques with your students and watch them grow in their art skills as well as their writing skills!