Uploaded all the @TEDxYTheSchool videos to the TEDxYouth YouTube channel..

Scroll through the videos from the YouTube playlist above or click below to watch individual videos from our speakers at TEDxYouth@TheSchool on 11/19/11. All the speaker bios are on the website.

Don Buckley
Charles Wilson
Lucas Ward
Dickson Despommier
Shannon Durugordon and Kate Scheuermann
Charles Colten
Monica Louie
Mauricio Salgado
Sharon Unis
Ben Hirschfeld
Nonsequitur

Thank you to all who presented, attended, sponsored and organized this second annual TEDxYouth@TheSchool!

5th graders are recording narrations for their "Day of the Dead" altars created with #Inspiration:

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Yesterday, I worked with the 5th grade Spanish teacher, Nicole Haleen, to help her students search and cite online images for their Day of the Dead (Día de Los Muertos) altars. They built their altar in Inspiration, as it allowed them to quickly create tiers in order to populate with images and text. Their three tiers represented what the person they were commemorating liked to eat, drink, and do.

After gathering and citing all the images, kids were told to write brief descriptions (in Spanish) for why they chose each image for their altar. To record their voices in Inspiration, students highlighted each image, went up to Tools in the menu bar, scrolled down to Insert video or sound and then over to Record sound. For this recording step, students were told to grab a pair of our Logitech USB microphone headsets. We previously used a different Logitech model that was not as kid-friendly, and the earpieces kept snapping off. Having a microphone headset is a huge advantage as they drastically cut down on ambient noise. Students will probably need to change their input/output sound settings in System Preferences. They will also probably need frequent reminders to do this.

5th graders are updating their #GoogleSites digital portfolios in preparation for parent conferences

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All students in grades 3-8 at The School at Columbia University are keeping a personal digital portfolio created with GoogleSites. I wrote an earlier post here about how we are using a really simple Announcements template to organize their New Posts.

Today, I worked with 5th graders in Dena Rothstein's class to gather some of their work and archive it digitally. We talked about labeling their posts with the subject so that they align alphabetically and clustered by subject in the sidebar. Kids wrote about their Spanish calacas, Spanish altars, Math locker problem, Math Handshake problem, and more.

Kids either took pictures using PhotoBooth on their MacBooks or with an external point-and-shoot camera. Dena provided them with a short list of writing prompts: Describe the process, Describe any challenges, Describe what you makes you proud...

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