CORE Printing & iPhone App Course

Two weeks into the school based enterprise and we're off to a great start. We've made brochures and business cards for CheesecakesByJayne. Students also created fliers which will be posted throughout the community and sent home to all 3rd-8th graders.  Soon, we'll have a website to display work and get the word out about CORE Printing.


Also, there's an online class from 2-3pm on Tuesdays which will teach people to create apps for the iPhone. Anyone interested in taking the class should talk to me or follow the link I emailed to you.

Running a Business

To everyone in the School Based Enterprise. I'm very proud of your enthusiasm that you've showed thus far. The next step is going to involve learning programs outside of Microsoft Publisher. Adobe has several outstanding tutorials for their programs (I'm still figuring out the differences between Illustrator, Photoshop, and InDesign). I thinks these videos will help you learn the new software programs. Next week, we'll look for applications that may be useful for us online.

School Based Enterprise

Here's the slideshow regarding the school based enterprise. This can be a great thing if we put our energy into it.

School Based Enterprise

View more presentations from Michael McCabe.

Drew's yah

Drews 4 cornerstones

My Values

This is my project.

Bre's animoto

This is about my some of my cornerstones.

The 4 corenerstones of me

Not much to say, it's a vid of my 4 important themes...so enjoy my leetness...

bmx

a project of me riding over the past two years

info on Marijuana

Marijuana

View more presentations from a student.

NFL

I really enjoy watching football so i made a slide show with some of my favorite players.

Old/New NBA

Dunks

Haileys Learning Style Xtranormal

CORE Weekend Plans/Relationships

Meet PM CORE

Click on the link to view my first Animoto creation.
If I can do it......you can, too! For Sure!

Personal Themes & Learning Styles/Strengths Projects

Do Work Time is Here!!!
For the next two weeks, we'll be creating projects which will express our personal themes, learning styles, and learning strengths. This week, we'll be focusing on three different websites to assist us: Animoto, Xtranormal, & Voicethread.

I want you guys to take your time and use all of your resources. I'm giving you 5 hours of class time to CREATE. Please work together and help each other out.

1. At least one one of your projects will have to involve your cornerstones. Your cornerstones are your 4 themes you feel strongest about.
2. At least one of your creations must focus on your multiple intelligence strength and/or learning style.
3. Have fun with a 3rd project, and be as creative as possible. All projects need to be school appropriate. If you wouldn't show this to your grandma, then don't create it. We will be showing our projects on Friday, and each student will post one of their projects to the blog.
   

Author Study Wrap-up & Into Personal Themes

I want to thank everyone for doing such a good job with the Author Study. I thought the read alouds of Gordan Korman's books went well. Also, your slideshows were outstanding! Thank you for taking the time to evaluate your peers. The results are in, you voted Jack's presentation as the finest in the group. Here it is: 

Jake, Reinvented: Themes

View more presentations from jvanelzen.

This week, we'll be starting our Personal Themes unit. If you miss any days, click here, and ask me how you can get caught up. 

Project Proposals

Remember to fill out this form if your working on an Independent Project
Also, Please put your name in the 1st Box & make sure you hit SUBMIT when you're finished.

Have you checked out GOOGLE BOOKS?

This is a great site! Google Books has over 10 Million books for you to read FOR FREE!!! This is causing quite the controversy among publishers, and since most of you don't remember when Napster was free (you were between 8-10 years old), trust me when I say, "enjoy the free books while they last". You'll find books ranging from Charles Dickens to Stephen King, so enjoy!

Controversial Social Issues Volume 3 - Justice

What kind of themes are present with this young man. He's gotten national attention lately. What do these articles mean when they say, "people love to live vicariously through criminals". 
You can earn up to 3 competencies by completing the following.
-1 Competency - View the three media clips 
-2 Competencies - Create a Google Doc in which you focus on the themes found within the three media articles (This may be a Document, Presentation, Spreadsheet, or Form). Please be sure to answer the following questions: How much jail time should this young man get if caught? Why? Also, what is your reaction to what he's done?

Interesting clip...

Saw this clip on Liz Kolb's blog, very fascinating. I wasn't lying when I told you that we're trying to prepare you for jobs that haven't been created yet. Let me know what you think-

Controversial Social Issues

This Controversial Social Issue is going to cover 2 weeks. You can earn up to 6 competencies. All students received an email about Google 10^100 project...


Basically, Google is offering to throw 10 Million Dollars towards an idea. For an entire year, Google allowed people to make proposals answering this question: 
What idea could help out the most people with 10 million dollars? 


They received over 150,00 ideas. The finalist can be found here. Here's how you can earn 6 competencies.
-1 competency = vote for the best idea
-2 competency = comment at the bottom of this post & justify your vote
-1 competency = send the link & get someone else to vote on their favorite idea
-1 competency = get that person to comment on this blog about why they voted
-1 competency = respond to someones comment 

Author Study

As we enter day 3 of our author study, I have decided to move away from Moodle and try Google Docs. Google released a new feature earlier this week called Sidewikis. Sidewiki's allow people to create links within Web Pages. This is just one more giant step for creating a personal web. So far this year, we have created web sites, constructed digital narratives, and now we're doing our first author study. I want to continue to incorporate technology into what we do. 
One reason why I want to move away from Moodle is the fact that Wiki entries can only be edited by one person at a time. As we've already seen- Google Docs can be edited by multiple people simultaneously. Since we all have Google Apps it should work smoothly. 
Here are the links to your documents (I'm pretty sure you'll have to log in to make corrections):
AM Literacy Jake, Revisted
PM Literacy Jake, Revisted
PM Literacy Son of the Mob


On a somewhat personal note, today is also the first day Google Wave invitations go out. I'm desperately hoping for 1 of the 100,000 invitations. I think we could use this for our Literacy class immediately. If I get it, I'll fill you in on what I want to do with it. I hope I get the golden ticket (the original is so much better).


I will continue to post controversial topics of the week & you'll have an opportunity to earn Technology Learning Targets each week...more will be revealed.


Over the next few days, you'll be getting a form emailed to you. Please answer it honestly & you don't even have to leave your name. The form will let me know what I need to do better as a teacher. I'll also post the form on the blog. Please don't use this as an opportunity to let me know how funny you are, or how terrible I am. If you answer honestly, it will help me to become a better teacher-

Sorry Santa

It was a typical day in my early years. It was the day before Christmas break and our kindergarten teacher, Ms. Olds, told the class that she had a special visitor coming in to class that day. Soon after that, in walked a big man dressed in a red suite and he had a great white beard hanging down from his chin. Thanks to older siblings in my family, I had already known the truth as to who really placed those presents under the tree on Christmas. Being so young, most of my classmates who still believed in this fraud thought he was totally legit. Well, they were about to get a very rude awakening. On TV I had seen clips of children at malls who were sitting on “Santa’s” lap and pulled down his beard. I made my way closer and closer to the unsuspecting man dressed in red. I reached for the long white beard hanging from his chin. I grabbed it, pulled it way down, and then let it go. It snapped back up to his face and covered his eyes. It made a pretty loud noise, like one you hear when someone snaps you with a rubber band. The whole class was shocked as to what just happened. I heard a few laughs and a few gasping noises coming from the kids in my class and the teachers in the room. The Santa Clause left the room immediately and the teachers began trying to calm down a bunch of confused little kids. They tried to come up with a cover story on how he was one of Santa’s helpers and that Santa was up in the sky watching or something. I sat in the back of the room with a smirk on my face listening to what they were trying to tell the kids. Then I was pulled into the hallway and my teacher told me that I had done something wrong, but I didn’t really get yelled at. A few teachers gathered together and began calling the parents of the children who had been in my class when it happened. They also called my parents and I was a little nervous to go home that day. It turned out that the guy who was dressed up as Santa was my pre-K teacher’s father. I got home and my mom took the news with more humor than anger, after all, I was only in kindergarten.

Fued between the Era's

To Whom It May Concern, this is about me and my thoughts while I was getting my ass chewed out by a hardened Vietnam era grandma who protested the war and her stories that go along with the conversation.
This story started on a Saturday evening, with the attempt and success of retrieving firewood from my friend’s grandparent’s house. But the whole story took place in between the gathering of firewood where we went in to say hi. It was a normal, well what I call normal, hello and what’s up kind of deal but then we started talking about what my buddy is going to do with the basement in his house. And then the conversation turned to money and stupid me saying “I really don’t need it because of my future job, money is not a problem”. Then my friend decides to say what my job/career was. In an instance my nice smooth ride turned into a ticket to hell.
All emotion has come into play anger, frustration, and sadness; all emotion that has opened from the depth of her memories, from the past and present to the future to everything she has known and loved. As I sat scared, but analyzed what she was saying made sense, I couldn’t stop thinking of William Tecumseh Sherman’s quote “War is cruel, and you cannot refine it” but you start to understand what he said back then, although he sounded more peaceful, is almost the exact thing this wise women was telling me. It began with the question on Taliban, well in my mind since we youthful Americans saw 9/11 and other things about the war; growing up with the war on terror, I figure I didn’t have to say what my mind was thinking.
“Do you know what the Taliban are?”
“They are a militant group that took over the Government in Afghanistan and shelters Al Qaeda.” I said, while trying to get the answer out fast and trying to say what I thought in my mind but shock and fear kept me from doing that.
Now I don’t exactly know what she said but it was along the lines of that the Taliban was helped my the US when the Russians tried to take it over and we let then have the country, but now we are in another Vietnam type war, all over the middle east, trying to spread democracy. That I’m going to die for a country set on imperialistic ideals for resources such as oil and I’m going to kill and do things that I’m not going to like that will stick with me for the rest of my life. Like I said up top is once you think about it, she’s right, well not one hundred percent but damn near close.
Then she stared talking about her memories and believe me, the stories she shared just killed me inside, when I heard about her friends that went to Vietnam and came back and the hell and horror they been through; I just died. She explained to me how many friends she had to bury for a war that didn’t even accomplish anything but kill people. How one minute her guy friend was between her and another friend was walking down the street and the next he jumped in front of a truck. How she had to burn photos of horrible things that they did in Vietnam, and that she had to bury one of her friends collection of fingers, ears and toes as a trophy of his time there. These things that she told me you can never find in a history book or movies or documentaries. People leave these things out for a reason because they are ashamed for what they done or something else emotional.
When she bursted into tears praying to God that he would knock some sense into me and to live my life and not die for a country that would just forget me after awhile. She said she was sorry and that we can go and get the wood for our fire, so we left and as my buddy went to go find the wood, I started for the truck, I was just heart sunk of the things I heard and dealt with just a few minutes ago.
It changed me but not my ideas, what she said improved me in someway that I don’t know but feel. My view on enlisting in the United States Marine Corps has not changed because I have my reason for joining. Growing up in a military family fueled my love for the Marine Corps. I want the honor and respect of earning the title of United States Marine. After realizing it I wanted to do something that only few have ever done and would even attempt on doing. That’s why I am enlisting. Ronald Reagan wrote: "Some people spend an entire lifetime wondering if they made a difference. The Marines don't have that problem."

New Credit Earning Opportunity

Controversial Social Topics

Each week, I'll be posting a controversial topic for you to comment on. You can earn up to three competencies per week for actively participating with the blog. If you don't have anything to work on during project work time, you can always earn competencies by completing the controversial social topics. Each competency should take approximately 45-60 minutes to complete.

This week's topic is immigration. Make sure you establish your opinion and separate your opinion from fact.

-1 Competency

View the CNN video and analyze the situation facing the French government. Leave a comment at the bottom of this blog. You may need to watch the clip several times. Go deeper than the basics, tell me more than who, what, where, when, why, and how. Your opinion regarding immigration should be clearly demonstrated by your comment.

-1 Competency

Complete a websearch on immigration. Prepare a presentation which features multiples points of view (immigrants, citizens who don't want immigrants, government agencies, etc.). Your presentation may be a write-up or a slideshow. Once your done with this piece, post it to this blog. I can show you how to embed a presentation.

-1 Competency

Go to Animoto and create a piece which features IMMIGRATION. Your photo's should feature images which portray immigration from more than one point of view. Once you've created your piece, post it to the blog & try to get your peers to comment on it.

Project Rough Drafts Due Wednesday

Student digital narratives are coming along nicely. Most of you have a great start on your project; please, let me know how I can help organize or focus your projects. I would like to see a rough draft by this Wednesday. We will have presentations as they become ready. I'm shooting for a week from this Friday to have a gallery walk (more details will be revealed)-

Cody found Animoto, which is a great program and he incorporated it into his project.

Planning Digital Narratives

We've been looking at plot and analyzing the plot line all week. We analyzed the film State of Play. We examined shorts stories by Ronald Dahl & Ray Bradbury (Thanks Mr Yunk for sharing from your collection). Tomorrow we'll be looking at the plot line in sit-coms. We see how comedies setup their climax rather than build to a climax with rising action. Students will view a 21 minute episodes and break down the plot of multiple comedy shows. By now, the following terms should be clearly understood for many types of narrative:

Exposition
Main Conflict/Central Idea
Rising Action
Climax
Falling Action
Resolution
Setting = Time & Place
Genre
Protagonist
Antagonist

In the near future, we need to cover the following elements in greater depth
Subplot
Character Traits
Character Foil
Supporting Characters
Character types relating to specific genre (e.g. The Girl, The Friend, Comic Relief, Trickster Figures, etc)



Looking forward to the next two weeks- students will create their own digital narratives. Some options include Memoir, Interview, Commercial, Song. Students are encouraged to get creative and think outside the box. They will determine if their story fiction or non-fiction. They will also receive individualized support to create their digital narrative. The planning form featured below will be an integral part of the student's digital narrative piece.

Digital Narratives

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

Digital Narratives

View more presentations from Michael McCabe.

What makes a good story

What's your favorite movie?
What's your favorite song?

What makes a good story? These questions will all be addressed this week.

Students in CORE Charter School will be examining the fundamentals of story. Student's will break down the traditional plot-line and will use this base to explore digital narratives. This week will springboard student's into creating their own digital narratives.

Only 179 to go...

I really enjoyed the first day of school. I'm glad everyone made it & I think we're going to have a great year.

The first day went smoothly! Other than a few technology glitches in the morning, everything went well. I’m very excited about this school year. I think students are going to produce great projects, and I hope to increase the communication between parents, staff, and students.

Here’s what we went over today:

1st Day Back 2009

View more documents from Michael McCabe.

The cornerstones will be highlighted throughout the entire year. Gardener’s multiple intelligences will be called the 7Smarts. The employability traits that students will be graded on are: Work Ethic, Good Communication, Collaboration, Problem Solving & Critical Thinking, and Social Responsibility. Students will also have to incorporate technology into their daily learning.

Your son or daughter is encouraged to bring in their iPod’s or other learning devices. Over the few days, we will be looking at planning personal websites, and appropriate uses of technology.

Here's the form for Project Proposals. In some cases, student's will need parent permission to before beginning their projets:


I hope the next 179 are as fun as day 1.

Completed Skits & Movie Presentations

I am a proud teacher.
The last few weeks in CORE Charter School have been difficult. With graduation closing in, many seniors seem to be feeling the pressure to get everything done and cross the finish line.

This probably was not the best time for me to assign a major project. In my teacher thinking, here's what I had planned, "We just spent five weeks discussing the employability traits and connecting them to personal narratives. It'd be great for students to share their stories with their peers. They already produced good skits in a very short time period. Two weeks will plenty of time." What I failed to take in to account is how personal a personal narrative is. Each one of you has a story to tell and it was not fair of me to expect you to lay out your story in a two week period. However, I have been pushing you for a reason- because each one of you is powerful beyond measure. You have earned your seat in CORE Charter School. I know many of you have not enjoyed coming to school in the past and I hope that CORE Charter School has at least provided you with a place where you feel safe, are challenged, and can tap into your talents. If you graduate early or if it takes you an extra semester to get through high school, my hope is that your prepared to jump through the hoops that await you after high school.

I'm also doing a project. I'm working on finishing up my masters degree, and I've been doing research over the past several weeks on our employability unit. I was starting to get stressed out because the results of my research were not what I was anticipating...the technology wasn't working, which meant that you guys couldn't get your projects done and that I wouldn't get my project done. On top of all that, my last day of teaching you is May 14th. I want to finish the year with you but I will be spending much needed time with my beautiful baby daughter.

I am a proud teacher because you took a risk. I just finished looking over your video's. I have not seen everyones video yet, but Lio's, Mikey & Brandon's set the bar very high. Thank you for opening up and telling your story. Your fearlessness is rare in a time when so many people are concerned solely with image and appearances.

My goal as a teacher is to make you feel a little more self assured than when you first walked in to CORE Charter School. This years seniors have perservered and achieved something that cannot be taken away. DO WORK, was something that I heard on a daily basis, sometimes it was just talk- but not with your personal narrative projects. Thank you for putting your heart into your work. It made me very proud to be your teacher. Please let me know what you need to get where you're going next-

-Mr. McCabe

Extra, Extra...

Buckle Down Time...

Its MAY ALREADY!?!
We're in the last month of the school year and it's time to buckle down and DO WoRK. Please leave me a comment on this posting or send me a short email updating me of your progress on your movies. I wish I could be there today, but I'm doing work at a conference on Web 2.0



Let me know how the filming of scenes goes today (extra LT FOR THE UPDATE)

Stay Tuned...

Students in CORE Charter School have been working on several different videos.

We were fortunate to be provided with multiple flip cameras which allow the students to create their own videos. More will be posted.

Stay tuned for the 1st Annual CORE Cinematic Awards.

ASK US, please!!!!

Mrs. Van Hout and I just returned from an awesome conference! Most of what I went to was on Technology & Innovation in the classroom.

Ask us what we did, we'd be more than happy to tell you...

WCSA Mobile Learning K-12

Check out this SlideShare Presentation: I went to this session at the conference and was very impressed! Look for some of her innovations to be implemented real soon!

WCSA Mobile Learning K-12

View more presentations from judyb.

Employability & Personal Narrative (storytelling)

Over the next 5 weeks, students in CORE Charter School will participate in unit which will examine 5 different areas:

1. Work Ethic






2. Communication




3. Collaboration

4. Critical Thinking/Problem Solving

5. Social Responsibility

Students will examine each area through personal narrative AKA storytelling. I'm hoping several guest speakers will come into our school and share their story. If you have any questions about what is going on- please let us know.

FIELD TRIP TO FVTC

On March 3rd, students in CORE Charter School will attend Fox Valley Technical College. The students will get a 1:1 tour of a specific area they've chosen.
Students in PM CORE who attend the field trip will not have classes in the afternoon.

Guest Speaker Series

Students in CORE Charter School will encounter several different community members. People from all walks of life and various professions will be speaking to the students in CORE Charter about their life experiences.

Half Way Home Celebration

Students in CORE Charter School will be going on their first field trip of the school year. To celebrate the fact that the school year is nearly half over, students will be going bowling and then out to lunch on Friday, January 9th. Please talk to your son or daughter about the trip and let us know if you have any concerns.

Two students have recently graduated and the rest of the seniors are half way through their final year of high school!