Marco Torres Keynote: ITSC 2009 Portland

These are my notes from Marco Torres‘ keynote at ITSC 2009 “Rethinking It.” I AM RECORDING THIS SESSION, AND MARCO HAS GIVEN ME PERMISSION TO SHARE SOME EXCERPTS/CLIPS FROM IT.

“The Community Inspiration Studio” is the name of Marco’s classroom
– In addition to being an educator Marco is an artist, photographer, and filmmaker
– Marco’s influence extends beyond the classroom, has led to industry recognition, opportunities to work with the best and the brightest in Hollywood

Was recently named California state teacher of the year
– active board member on the George Lucas Educational Foundation

I love what I do, I love to share the opporunities which are hiding in multimedia

mediamaking provides great learning opportunities
– kids create a product, can be metacognitive, can go through a process and see how things are improving it

I’ve been asked to look this year at what learning looks like outside our schools

If this is a little messy today, you’ll forgive me, right? 🙂

Now we are living in a time where distance is determined by bandwidth
– Distance = Bandwidth

esp secondary school teachers: we fear change because we fear we are alone
– many times we feel like we have to do everything
– Fear = Alone
– teachers still feel like you have to know everything

In filmmaking, if I write part of the script, you trust that someone else knows how to do other things
– I’ve learned there are other people out there who know how to do all these things, I don’t have to know all those things

Rosa, one of my students, is here to assist today
– we’ve been trying to let teachers know “You are not alone”

Where are my language arts teachers?
Where are my media and moviemaking folks?
Where are my music folks?

So in this room, we could make a good movie, because people

Too often in moviemaking there is so much focus on the process, the films turn out poorly
– heavily edited, bad films

First year at UC Berekely that students can also graduate with a Final Cut Pro Certification

Moviemaking = GREAT TEACHING
– the web provides so many opportunities now to showcase those skills and ability

These are examples of universities

I don’t have to know it all

Now Rosa is going to demonstrate some things (former student)
– collaboration with each other and other teachers was very important in Marco’s class
– example of studying a book about the south, and contacted one of Marco’s friends in Mississippi to record a voiceover
– we didn’t realize in school how little collaboration like this happens
– we had become used to it in class, having access to so many different people

For us (students) collaboration is very important
– it is so important to recognize you are not alone

Now project called “Indian Country”
– all our projects are under 5 minutes
– by the time we finished high school we had a list of 30 or 40 movies we had created (a big body of work)

NOW WORKING TO GET THE LAPTOP RESOLUTION CHANGED TO 1024

Marco:
– I first worked with language arts teachers at our school: collaborating on an essay about an issue
– then would give it to the media folks, take the story and find images/video appropriate to that story
– Language Arts teachers then didn’t have to worry about the technology
– students worried about making connections
– Problem: Those 2 language arts teachers left our school, and we were left with language arts teachers who wouldn’t permit any type of collaboration at all in the school
– So, we bypassed them and found language arts teachers in another school with whom we can collaborate

NOW OPENING ICHAT AND STARTING SCEENSHARING, ROSA’S SISTER IN CALIFORNIA IS NOW CONNECTED VIA ICHAT

Rosa:
– Torres found someone in Arizona with a very capitvating voice
– that can be a role for a student, to go find someone who can record a script that is written by someone else

[ELLY, ROSA’S SISTER, IS DRIVING THE MOUSE AND PLAYING FINAL CUT PRO

Elly:
– find keywords and images which match up with those
– we find royalty free images to use
– we need to find those because our projects often travel far, and we don’t want to run into copyright violation issues
– another job from someone: take keywords from the narration
– went to the Smithsonian institute image galleries to find sunsets

Marco ot Elly: Couldn’t we make a list of those keywords
Elly: Yes we could, and then we can divide those out and let other have responsibility for those tasks

Elly: we can find some ambient noise: bird noise, the wind, that could give a more natural sound

Rosa: That gives the audio more depth, but we still need more, maybe some music

Elly: we want to find a track that really complements the visuals and doesn’t overpower it

Rosa: this is a royalty-free track, from one of Marco’s friends who is an amazing
– Moby is someone who you can request songs for projects that you can use
– I don’t play an instrument but I don’t have to, I can reach out to others who know how

this is taking advantage of your network

Marco: You can see that Elly is doing all the technical work [FROM CALIFORNIA REMOTELY VIA ICHAT SCREENSHARING]

Elly: In our classroom, no one thought they had to know everything, everyone had specializations

Rosa: we need a transition to move from the plains to Alaska

Elly: you want to use a smooth transition, a star wipe would be too distracting

NOW PLAYING THE ENTIRE VIDEO. THIS IS A VERY POWERFUL SCRIPT. “WE MIGRATE BY HEART.” THE NAME OF THIS VIDEO IS “IN INDIAN COUNTRY.” ELLIE IS NOW DISCONNECTED

Rosa: Take advantage of your network
– why not collaborate?
– for us it works, it is not just exciting, the skills: just learning to talk with others, communicating, talking to groups, directing, etc.
– those skills helped us get through high school and graduate, our high school had 5000 students
– you just feel like 1 among 5000
– we had to be on tracks because we didn’t even all fit in our school
– when you feel like someone needs you, that feeling is very important
– we thought we were just having fun, we loved going to school
– in our school, less than 50% were graduating, 40% or less
– 98 – 99% of us that went through this program did graduate because we built bonds, relations, and confidence
– that helped me greatly in college, in my master’s program, doing my student teaching

take advantage of it [COLLABORATION AND WORKING TOGETHER]
– you can do it

Marco:
– when my kids go off to college many of my kids thought things would be better
– many of

when you get graded on a curve in engineering, you don’t really don’t find other students sharing with you much

I CAN CERTAINLY RELATE TO THAT FROM USAFA, WHERE VIRTUALLY EVERYTHING WAS GRADED ON A CURVE

LogmeIn and GotomyPC are other solutions, this solution just worked for us [ICHAT SCREENSHARING]

When ports are blocked at our school, the teachers are screaming because that is blocking

recent LA Times article: our area had the least access to technology

All my kids stayed in touch with each other, didn’t matter where kids went to school, they were all able to connect

– even Stanford for Carmen, most of her partners for projects were outside Stanford because her professor was open to that

it is the AFFECT: what is it you want to do with technology

last year I asked my social studies department: What makes you an expert?
– then I asked if I could have looked up all that information you have in Google
– sometimes in education we focus too much on the nouns not the verbs: it is what we do with it

Remember the controversy with with Rev Wright and Obama
– story on an airplane

We are living during a different time
– what do we really want?
– I have been sharing with colleges of education
– what is an educated person?
– when we say “we have to prepare kids? what is an educated person?”
– that almost causes a fight at some schools of education. Is that a noun or a verb?
– is that a bank of information, or is it a skillset

Albert Einstein question: “Don’ ask questions you can look up.”

Flyer of an expert who came from “the industry”
– came from design
– would create professional looking flyers for them

My student Raquel
– show “pimp my ride”
– I asked my student to pimp his flyer

IT IS AN AMAZING DIFFERENCE

I remember teaching a film class, someone brought me their film book
– says every commercial should be 3 cuts at 10 seconds each

I like to challenge educators
– Nouns Vs. Verbs
– TV show “Kitchen Nightmares”
– on that show if you are not talking about food, you are in trouble

in many schools we are NOT talking about kids, we are talking

Not many cooking shows say: “Hello we are going to talk about this whisk”
– food shows focus on the verbs

Integration: a scientific study of the changing of the nouns
– picture of cave man
1400- now monk chanting: read pages 1-10, answer questions 1-4, only men in the class
1950- remember the slate, it took years to convert to a blackboard so we could broadcast learning and write longer things
1975- image of teacher dressed as a hippie
— it took 15 years to move the overhead projector into the classroom from the bowling alley

some doctoral dissertations focused just on studying the impact of the overhead projector on learning
– remember professional development on the overhead projector
– an your whole department had to share just one
– teacher is still saying read pages 1-10 answer questions 1-4

1988: AC/DC and RUN DMC instructor using the whiteboard with colored inks

1995: now still using whiteboard, but one color only because of budget cuts

2008: so what are we doing now

Especially at conferences we see this
– lots of audio transitions from PPT
– www.readpages1through10.com

too often we focus on the things not the

if we focus on the student as the recipient, not the producer, then things won’t change
– so keep score as an admin: how often do you see students as the recipient

big question: what kind of a producer are you?
– just becuase you are an audio learner, you may be a visual producer

what is exciting: we are living in a time when we have studio, stage, and community
– think about a studio
– you can choose whatever instrument you want
– you’ll see some kids in a studio: some are running mics, some to bass, some to drums, some to the control room
– so now we have a mechanism for kids to do this

I remember when blogs first came out
– many early educators would blog about blogging, podcasts were about podcasting
– in PD I ask questions that people have to think about, and when I ask them to write a blog comment I was amazed how many more answers and in-depth answers they have
– I like how we have those options now

and we have the stage to showcase our learning, we have the community to support us

NOW SHOWING VIDEO FROM AN IPOD OF READING PAGES 1-10, ANSWERING QUESTIONS 1-4

It is amazing what we have available now, but we have to

Michael Mandel, BusinessWeek, Nov 2007
“What’s more, the modern workplace no longer resembles the factory assemly line but rather the design studio, where the core values are collaboration and innovation, not mindless repetition.”

It is amaing how we take that studio, stage and community

It is amazing that the iPhone has changes so mcuh

SW Airlines
– says we are moving from the logical to thecreative
– from the individual to the community
– from the functional to the meaningful
– from the facts to the story

if information is so ubiquitious, that is not where the value is added then, is it?
– it’s where it’s interpreted and use

many still see the Internet as a pull down experience
– kids see it more as a push-up experience

now going to show you an interview I had a chance to do
– FunTwo, playing Pachelbel’s Canon
– over 37 million hits

as someone looking at learning happening outside of school
– this is happening in a bedroom
– the audience is obviously kids: 14-20 year olds mainly
– he is using a piece of music we might now normally think of kids being interested in

When I asked kids to describe school in 1 word
– “bored”
– same answer for teachers
– then I ask superintendents what is their plan to deal with that next week

FROM THE AUDIENCE: SOMEONE SAID “DO MORE STANDARDIZED TESTS” [AS THE KIND OF ANSWER AN ADMINISTRATOR WOULD SAY]

there are thousands of people that follow this guy, and want to imitate, and learn it
– lots of pictures of other people who are responding to that, playing guitar

SO MARCO IS CONTEXTUALIZING THIS VIDEO MUCH BETTER THAN MANY OTHER PEOPLE I’VE SEEN BEFORE. THIS REMINDS ME THAT ONE OF MY UNACHIEVED LIFE GOALS IS TO PLAY THE GUITAR. JOHN DENVER STYLE. AROUND THE CAMPFIRE STUFF. BUT THIS KIND OF HARD ROCK STUFF WOULD BE FUN TO THROW IN TOO. I WONDER IF I’LL EVER FIND A WAY TO LEARN?

Have you seen that video of Filipino prisoners dancing?
Latest one is a 700 person choreographed dance
– part I asked teachers to reflect on: “If you put the pythagorian
– kids are saying, “If you want to learn this, we will help you”
– that is what blows me away
– you are not alone
– do you think someone is in charge? do you think on Wednesdays they meet?

Schooling is really getting in the way of learning in a lot of examples

bands are making homeage videos to this now

when I interviewed this student, he barely looked up
– he has a community
– he has a stage

What I thought was really fascinating, other people were asking him to do another one (recording)
– they were not asking him to make it easier
– they actually wanted it harder

Do you think he had problems finding someone to help him?
– the only way I could survive my 1st year at San Fernando High School was with help, we lost 30-40% of our faculty that year, teachers were on strike
– I had to rely on people in my school and outside my school

So now the 2nd challenge: Summer 3 mvt from the Four Seasons by Vivaldi

9th graders commonly say they want school to be challenging

Do I have all the answers? No. But we need to keep talking to figure these things out.

I like to show this website: Epicurious
– I have a child with an egg allergy, it’s good for me to choose good foods
– the tagline: “for people who love to eat”
– what does your website community for people who love to learn
– from what kind of perspective is your website created

We have always struggled making educational programming for 14-20 year olds
– they don’t like to be talked down to
– MythBusters has been very successful because you are learning as you watch them learn
– they are asking questions and going through a process

Now the kids DO have access to the “teacher’s edition” of the textbook

Now with this website Epicurious you are alerted when others you know have a new favorite recipe
– with this website if you type in your zip code, it says you live near a market, when it shows you the ingredients it gives them to you in a list of how they are laid out in the

Now integrating twitter so when you are cooking a recipe for the first time, you can connect with those people

We did a project along with Mississippi river with Google Earth asking a simple question: Do more expensive homes along with Mississippi River have thicker walls?

Who knows what julianing is?
– just in time learning right on the spot

Question we need to frankly ask ourselves: “Why are cooks kicking our ____?”
– do you think most of the people using this website care about web 2.0 and social networking?
– No, they are focusing on the THING not the tool

Now: movie “Ham and Eggs”
– reason I do all this is it connects many pieces together
– filmmaking, we are not alone
– my biggest goal: connect us together
– when we are connected we are better at risk taking, and when we are better at risk taking we are better for our kids

For 6 years I’ve been asking kids to go out and make movies about their families
– this is a video Rosa did when she was in High school with her classmates and friends

What’s going to get us through is continuing to talk with each other
– the answers may not be inside your school, they may be with others here at this conference
– you met somebody today, add them to your buddy list, that really does mean something

alasmedia.wikispaces.com
flickschool.com
sfett.com

torres21 [at] me [dot] com

Marco’s website: http://torres21.com/

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marco, torres, marcotorres, itsc09, itsc2009, itsc, education, technology, learning

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