I just wrote a post yesterday about school gardens and then Cindy found this ad for a school-based plant sale. The sale was in a nearby suburb so we decided to check it out. It is getting close to planting time in Minnesota and we purchase some of our plants to support local charities.
Champlin Park offers secondary classes in urban agriculture. I understand that some city dwellers raise chickens in their backyards and many have gardens, but the phrase “urban agriculture” was new to me. I spoke at some length with the school’s program director and learned a lot. The courses are considered part of the science curriculum, but do not count toward required science credit requirements. I would translate that as electives. The director said that students take the courses for many reasons including just wanting to take a course for a change that allows them to do something. I have my own way of understanding some of these ideas and I would describe this as a “maker” argument. Some students want a different kind of science connection. Some see a possible vocational opportunity. I suppose in the kind of small, rural school I attended as a youth, we might describe this as FFA (Future Farmers of America). Rural agriculture and urban agriculture seem very different.
I wonder if others interested in urban agriculture could make the same argument as the eSports advocates. There is a vocational opportunity if you want to follow that path. I would guess gardening is a more life long activity than gaming. There is a science connection. A subgroup of students finds this focus interesting.
School gardens make a lot of sense to me. Gardens can be a learning experience out of their room and offers “making” opportunities related to nearly every area of the curriculum. Often overlooked is just the amount of work involved in producing vegetables and an appreciation for the small farmers who often do this work. Lesson plans are available to help interested educators get started.
One of the issues with school gardens is the timing of growing vegetables in relation to the school year. Unfortunately, educators may find themselves taking care of a garden their students started during the summer which may not be how they hoped things would work out and student movement to another grade in the fall may make it complicated for students to follow through with a harvest.
My proposal is to take advantage of hydroponic gardening during the Fall and Winter. These units can be operated in individual classrooms and offer many of the educational benefits of outdoor gardens. My unit is from Aerogarden. Schools may also have small greenhouses as part of the biology program.
I grow crops year-round supplementing my larger outdoor garden with the multiple crops I can harvest indoors. Here is the latest crop (about three weeks old) of cherry tomatoes, lettuce, and some herbs. These will be available before the same crops I could grow outside.
This is an interesting discussion by those who want to understand and improve social media. As I understand the position of the guest on this podcast, two things are important for improving social media. First, we need more options with focused agenda rather than big sites that confuse many different purposes. Second, the smaller, more focused sites require more obvious norms, rules, and moderation supported by onboarding for new members so they understand this guidance.
The guest describes his research with gobo.social (which does not seem to be up at the time I wrote this post. Maybe later.)
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Summarization is one way to encourage better reading comprehension. It is an external process (an assignment) that causes a reader to act on the information a reader gathers from a document. The idea is that this external activity encourages productive cognitive behaviors (internal activity) that may or may not have happened without the task. Summarization is one of the specific activities included in reading comprehension instructional strategies such as reciprocal teaching. Summarization is also an important skill in any note-taking strategy (e.g., Cornell notes).
Learning to summarize is the challenge. First, anyone wanting to generate a summary must identify the most important content. This decision is to some extent personal and suited to the purpose someone has for reading. However, core ideas are also more objective. Exploring what more skilled readers regard as core and discussing why such decisions are reached can be helpful.
This post from Contol-Alt-Achieve list multiple ways in which some service could generate a summary or identify core ideas. Author Eric Curts suggests that these tools could be helpful for several reasons – offering a list of key ideas for a reader to consider, offering a shorter version to process, functioning as an advance organizer.
I was most interested in a tool (Chrome extension) called Article Highlighter. The tool uses an algorithm to identify core ideas and allows a progressive approach that expands from most central to secondary level importance, etc. I see this as a tool that might be incorporated in a task in which the student first makes a prediction, checks it against article highlighter, and then explores any differences that might be evident. Writing algorithms to accomplish summarization and prioritization tasks would be difficult and even a discussion of how such an algorithm might work and what rules an individual would use would be interesting.
Once a web page to be summarized is loaded, the Article Highlighter is selected from the icon menu. Each time this icon is selected more content is added as core information.
YouTube offers viewers some text transcript features I am guessing are unfamiliar to most. The following offers two examples.
To generate a transcript record you could save or use to return to specific points in the video.
Below the video you should see three dots (…). Selecting this icon will reveal a menu allowing you to see a running transcript that will appear to the right of the video window. When the video has finished, you can copy and paste this text. You can also click on a line in the transcript to return to that point in the video. This can be helpful when you want to review a section that was particularly important or confusing.
You can view the same transcript as a closed caption while watching the video. You can even watch the closed caption as Google’s translation of the text into a different language. This process starts with the gear icon beneath the video window. Selecting the gear will open a menu and you should select subtitles.
Now, if you want to see subtitles in a different language, you begin with the English version playing, but return to the gear icon. It should look different with auto-translate now visible. Select auto-translate to view language options. Select the desired language.
Chrome Flex has been available for a couple of months now, but I had to wait until I returned home from my winter break and had access to a couple of old computers and a flash drive. One of the few challenges to spending the winter months in Kauaii is not having access to all of my stuff.
As I understand the history, Google purchased Cloud Ready and now offers a related product, Chrome Flex, at no cost. Chrome Flex is intended to offer a solution to two problems: 1) old Macintosh and Windows computers unable to run the current operating system intended for their brand and 2) Chromebooks that have passed the date at which they are still supported. I guess this is kind of the same problem. Often these machines are still functional and the older Macs and Windows machines may have the power and storage equal to or exceeding the less expensive Chromebooks. Schools and others interested in inexpensive alternatives might repurpose older machines with an operating system that allows them to function as Chromebooks and extend the useful life of these machines before sending them to the technology dump.
I have both an old Macbook Air and an old Dell that I have not used in years, but still keep around for experiments – usually a Linux install of some type. These machines are ideal for conversion to a Chromebook.
The process is easier than you might expect. All you need is a flash drive and an existing Chrome browser to which you add the Chromebook Recovery Utility (it is a Chrome extension). This extension allows you to create a recovery disk on the Flash Drive. Follow the instructions in creating the recovery drive and then use it with the computer you want to convert. I didn’t actually convert either of the old computers to a Chromebook – running the Chrome OS from the flash drive was good enough for me. I already have a perfectly good Chromebook, but maybe you don’t.
Chrome Flex worked great. This has to be one of the most successful repurposing ventures I have tried.
What I learned
1) Don’t be cheap with the flash drive. I originally tried the install with a 32GB flash drive I found in a drawer. I had trouble with crashes and getting anything beyond very basic web browsing to work and nearly gave up on the entire adventure. They don’t offer this caution in the articles I read. I purchased a 512 GB flash drive (not cheap) and everything worked without any hiccups
2) When you access the flash drive from your older computer, you can try Chrome Flex from the drive or go ahead with the installation. I have learned from experience to try an experimental OS from the install drive first. I would get Flex to work on both the Mac and Windows machine, but I encountered problems with specific drivers on the Windows machine. It would not produce audio. I have encountered exactly this same problem when attempting linux OSs – the basic apps would work, but I would have trouble with drivers. Individuals with more experience or more patience may be to get my Dell to function without limitations, but I have never had a complete success with the Dell. Try running from the Flash Drive to identify such issues,
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