Monday, April 9, 2012

Your Chance to Shine! Join a college-level Odyssey of the Mind team!

You've heard me talk about the creative problem-solving competition Odyssey of the Mind. Typically, OM teams are made up of seven kids grades 3-5 or 6-8 or 9-12. In recent years, however, OM has developed what they call Division IV teams - made up of college students of any age - participants must take at least one college-level class that year.

Last year, a Colorado OM alum came to OU. She and her dad (who is still living in Colorado) decided to form a Div IV team. They discussed most of their solution via email and text and then, at World Finals, completed the actual building of the solution, rehearsing and preparing for their competition day right there at University of Maryland.

These two adults are again wanting to compete at World Finals and are looking for additional team members. This year, finals is at Iowa State University May 23 - 26. Div. IV team members who agree to perform volunteer hours during Finals receive a $200 discount on their registration, which is about $520 without the discount. If you are interested in this opportunity to be on a Division IV OM team and compete in Iowa, you should contact rdm0728@comcast.net. They would be interested in hearing from you at the earliest opportunity because they must register their team this week.

Next year, my son and his friends plan to have a Division IV team from OSU. School ends the first week in May, which gives a team 3 weeks to prepare a solution before leaving for World Finals. Easy-peasy. Keep that in mind if you can't do it this year. Remember you can view a video of my son's solution from last year's World Finals at www.stillwatercreativity.com (linked on the About Me page of this blog.)

Let me know if you have questions I can answer.

Making Videos - A "how-to" by Richard Byrne

Making Videos on the Web

Saturday, January 21, 2012

Reflecting: How to Write a Quality Response

(image of Cloud Gate in Chicago, commonly known as "The Bean" is from http://whereintheworlddd.tumblr.com/post/12580167459/november-2nd-2011-day-two-like-this-blog-post)

When an assignment does not have a rubric, what is it that earns a response a perfect score? Conversely, why are points subtracted on a response? Here are some of the criteria I apply when scoring your reflection pieces like the “Personal Experiences with Technology” we just completed.

1. Did you carefully read the assignment? Most of the assignments have several parts, and each part might have several questions. Imbedded in your work I should find responses to all parts of the question.

2. Length: Your response should be long enough to adequately answer all parts of the question. Usually, that means one or more sentences per question. In addition, written work often includes introductions, conclusions, topic sentences, and transition sentences, and reflections of this type often also include short stories (called “anecdotes”) which help illustrate your thoughts.

3. Paragraphs: Sentences should be grouped together according to their topic. Sometimes a paragraph can contain lists; these paragraphs still have a topic sentence and the list is then either numbered, lettered, separated by commas, or even bulleted.

4. Correct spelling: If it helps you to type your response into Word and do a spell-check before pasting into the discussion board, please feel free to do so. If you prefer to work in Word and attach a document to the discussion board, that is also fine (although it’s a little harder for your reader.) I did finally find a spell-check button on the discussion board post window: it’s just above the typing screen on the lower left of the editing tools.
You can see the spell-check button circled above, and below is a shot of the spell-checker at work.

5. Correct Mechanics: Names and titles of things are almost always capitalized. Thus, we work in Microsoft Word or Powerpoint or Excel. We do, however, use our iPads, an example of a non-standard capitalization. (If in doubt, check it online. Googling the question “is ‘microsoft word’ capitalized?” does not generate any first-page results about the capitalization of the title, however, the first few results are from the Microsoft Corporation and the annotations all show them referring to “Microsoft Word” in capitals. One can infer that if the company who makes the product uses capital letters, we should too.)

6. Interesting content: Finally, the best responses are written by those that do all of the above well, and who make the extra effort to personalize or add interest. Perhaps the author has chosen a quotation to illustrate a thought; maybe a theme has been utilized or a title adds to our interest. Take a look at my reactions to your “personal experiences” essays on D2L. Notice that I changed the title of my responses? I was hoping to pique your interest, and to make my comments more memorable and easier to find if we want to look back at them.

A good teacher models for her students, so at this point, I should write my own response. However, life is calling. I’ll try to get to it later. Have a great weekend and write some great responses!