As is apparently tradition for me, I’m presenting two sessions at this year’s Powering Up With Technology Conference. (My first presentation at PUWT was … 2006? 12 years ago? Wow!) Rather than give long and difficult to type URLS for my presentations, I thought I’d share them here. (Yes, I am aware that “academicaesthetic” is not universally easy to type, but it’s easier than, say, “o03Eil5s,” and people can get here from AaronBSmith.com … hm, maybe that’s the link I’ll share.) Keep in mind that…Continue Reading “PUWT18 Presentations”
Let’s talk about assessment. … OK, now that I’ve scared off any random students who’ve managed to find my website, let’s have an honest talk about assessment. Grades in one form or another have been a staple of education for a very long time indeed. With the push to quantify school quality through standardized testing and the overall inertia that we normally encounter in academia in general, they don’t look like they’ll be going away any time soon. So naturally, they’re a perfect thing for…Continue Reading “Will This Be Graded?”
Lesson ideas: Take 100 unique shots of the same item and/or in the same location. (The first 50 or so will likely not be so good. After that, students will be forced to think.) Photograph something being made (Lego sculpture, a meal, a painting, etc.) with the camera in a different location in regards to the subject in each photo. Document an outside (not in a car) journey from the point of view of your feet. Capture as many landmarks/areas of interest as possible. Create…Continue Reading “5(ish) Photography Lesson Ideas”
As I write this, a lot of final exams are being given and/or graded. Mine are actually due today, and internet use isn’t an option, it’s a requirement.
Yesterday I started documenting my efforts towards making homework enjoyable enough for my students to actually do it for a change. By the end of that post I’d set up a weekly assignment where students made a video series as if they were YouTube stars. There was a definite increase in participation and quality, but I wasn’t quite done. Binge Watching Isn’t So Bad. I started by taking all of the homework videos submitted over the previous week and throwing them in a folder in…Continue Reading “Getting Homework to Work, Part 2”
In the near future, I’m going to be sharing some spam with my students, and not for the reason you’d think I’d do it. While teaching how to tell the difference between actual important emails and unsolicited commercial and/or malicious emails is important, that won’t be the primary goal. In addition to everything else I teach, part of my curriculum involves criticism. We as a culture of consumers frequently elevate critique itself into an art form – one so high that we generalize its practitioners…Continue Reading “Teaching Criticism With Spam”
I blogged a while back about OpenShot, which is open source, cross-platform, and still not bad for some things. Are you stuck with 32bit computers? Use OpenShot. For everything else… use HitFilm Express. HitFilm Express is a robust, cross-platform, non-linear video editor capable of rendering multiple tracks of audio and video, applying chroma key, moving/cropping where video appears on the screen, and a bunch of other effects that I’ve never needed. Oh, and it’s 100% free. Free as in teachers should get their hands on…Continue Reading “Edit Video For Free With HitFilm Express”
“It’s not the camera that takes the photo, it’s the photographer.” This or something like it is said a lot by photographers. Sure, a really expensive camera can help, but give an experienced photog a point-and-click disposable film camera from a bygone era and they’ll still crank out a few shots worth remembering. So I was kind of shocked when I, first learning the difference between taking a good photo and wasting developer fluid, learned that my camera was already doing some of the thinking…Continue Reading “How Much Of Your Photo Is Your Choice?”
This article on Mashable reads like it was written by a petulant teen. Schools may provide students with a wealth of academic knowledge, but do they really think they have what it takes to outsmart children when it comes to social media? What’s worse is … they’re kind of right. While many educators are more forward thinking about cell phone use in the classroom, there are a lot of old school (pun intended) individuals that see any distraction as an affront to their station and…Continue Reading “I Didn’t Know About The Great Social Media War”
TL:DR: I haven’t banned fidget spinners yet, and I don’t expect that I’ll have to do so. Long version: Spinners: Kids love them, teachers demonize them. They’re a distraction! They’re disrupting the classroom! They’re fine for autistic kids, but to everyone else, they’re toys! I won’t have them in my classroom! We’ve banned them on the district level, and good riddance! … sound familiar? Like any thing else that comes around and finds its way into a school setting overnight (remember the era before dabbing was…Continue Reading “Obligatory Spinner Opinion”