Honouring your classmate

It started last week, Tuesday night, January 2nd, with the news that one of our students was killed in a car accident. With school set to go back into session on the next Monday, it was apparent that a plan needed to be put into place to help students and staff deal with the tragedy. The school was opened for the remainder of the week for those who wanted to gather to share their grief and work with counselors. I felt that there need to be a way for students to express themselve digitally at a time like this, after all, within minutes following the event, the news started to spread on MSN.

On Monday morning I went to the school to give support in any way I could, including having the computer lab available for students to drop in if they chose to do so. One girl who knew he school was looking for pictures to put with a memory scrapbook that was being created came by to ask if she could go onto the internet as she had a website that she maintained on one of the popular social networking sites. Along with other pages typical of the sites created by 12 year olds, there was a page that was dedicated to the student who had passed away. Aside from her own writing and visuals, there was an area of comments where other students had written their thoughts.

What then transpired was a project idea to have a slide show to show at the memoria service. It was held this afternoon and three students began to collect words and phrases from their classmates. Digital photos surfaced and I spent a bit of time introducing the girls to ComicLife. As time permitted, between classes in Band, PE, Reading, Writing, and Math, the girls would come to the lab and chose images that fit various themes. They had never used the digital tools in their lab... they didn't even know they were there to use. With minimal instruction on my part they were off. From ComicLife to QuickTime movie, to iMovie with transitions and music their friend liked, they completed a wonderful slide show to honour their friend.
Three other students promoted a fashion show as the student who had passed away was often referred to as a "fashionista". Her goal in life was to become a designer. Thirty or so students participated in the show with digital images then put into iPhoto and a slide show created, again with background music from their classmate's collection.

Today at the memorial there was a station set up with music, including a piece recorded in GarageBand by one of the students, another with the fashion show, and finally during the service the Remembering Brynnie video. I couldn't have been more proud of these students.

One of the legacies of this tragedy is that there are now a group of students who have quickly learned to use the tools the school has to offer them and all have said they would like to use them more for other projects and to teach others. A very positive outcome to a seriously tragic event.

Nostalgia

Two blog posts I read today reminded me of school events in my past. The first was a January 1 post by the Savvy Technologist, Tim Wilson. In this post, Tim demonstrates how the Google search box can be used to do a calculation.

I tried to convert gills to pecks... it didn't do it automatically, but it did point me to some pages where I was reminded of my classroom days in the late 1950s when I learned these conversions by rote... two pints, one quart, four quarts, one gallon and, of course, 4 pecks in a bushel. Reminds me of a post I read earlier this week about the value (?) of memorization.

The second post that brought back memories concerned stop animation and had a google video link to a movie by Norman McLaren, produced for the National Filmboard of Canada in 1952. I recall seeing this movie in school and and again in university when I was studying media. I also showed it to my students in my early years of teaching and used it as a resource for teaching simple animation. I recall this as a valuable resource and judging by the content of this blog entry, it is still an useful teaching tool.

First work day of the new year

Meeting with staff this morning was interesting as we explored some of the directions we are going with our classroom servers, some of the infrastructure we want to grow over the next few years (wireless), some of the user directions we want to be prepared for (student and staff bringing their own computers), and the ways that we, personally, can support these initiatives.

Recently I have been a bit discouraged by the progress being made towards making some real and positive changes to the way our staff uses the technology in the support of students learning. I was encouraged (?) to discover that I am not alone in this feeling... others in similar positions to mine are feeling the same way. For example, Will Richardson writes about this in his blog entry for January 2, 2007.


For those visually inclined I copied this image from a blog written by Kathy Sierra.

From where I sit, the progress we are making towards change is well characterized by this image.

Happy New Year

Once again we rang in the New Year with our good friends the Waltons. This has been a tradition for almost 30 years and we have only missed a few years, once due to really bad weather (we celebrated a few months later), and a short string of years when they had moved to Montana.

The celebration this year started on the 30th. My chef son-in-law came over in the morning to give me a lesson in preparing seafood stuffed pasta (the dinner choice for that night) and also with the preparation of the carrot-ginger soup which we would have on New Year's Eve.

The main course for New Year's Eve dinner was a Mediterranean Pork Roulade. We enjoyed the stuffed pastas for dinner the night before and I got up early on the morning of the 31st to prepare the roast for cooking that evening. I realized after building the layers that I had placed them on the wrong side of the pork!

We went on a good long walk to build up our appetites. Pictured from the left, Lorne, Joan, Judy, and Duffy.

Once dinner was all though, we realized we had gone through a few good wines during our two dinner event.