May

11

Hiking Alder Springs Trail for Mother’s Day

May 11, 2008 |  Tagged , | Leave a Comment

As mother’s day present, my family and I (including our dogs J.J. and Clyde) went for a hike to Alder Springs Trail and the Deschutes River. It was the perfect Mother’s Day Present for me :-)

May

9

“Remove” by Delacrew

May 9, 2008 | | Leave a Comment

“Remove” a very interesting video about privacy issues on the internet by Delacrew.

Remove from delacrew on Vimeo.

May

8

Harry Potter Commercial

May 8, 2008 |  Tagged , , , | Leave a Comment


Harry Potter Commercial from Pia Alliende on Vimeo.

Yet another of my daughter’s school projects. This time she needed to make a 1 minute commercial video. She decided to do it on Harry Potter books since she has read them all 4 times each. She spent several days making puppetts. She is very effective and creative with her school work but she was encourage to be more efficient since we didn’t want another last minute crisis. Anyway, warnings didn’t help; she ended up making her movie the day before it was due with my help. The video was done after 4 hours of shooting and editing. No rest for mommy. Presentation day in school was a huge success. Her classmates asked to watch the commercial again. Eventually they watched it 3 times. It was a very convincing ad. Every kid wanted to have not a Harry Potter book but a kitty cat!!! It was the best way of promoting the giving away of our litter of 5 weeks old kittens :-) Nonetheless, I thought it was a cute commercial enticing reading.

Apr

22

4th Grade Field Trip to the High Desert Museum

April 22, 2008 | | Leave a Comment

Today I decided to take the day off and go to a field trip with my son. He is a 4th grader at John Tuck Elementary School in Redmond. We went to the High Desert Museum . The teachers gave us chaperons a packet students needed to complete by the end of the visit. That kept us busy and going!

First, we visit the Donald M. Kerr Birds of Prey Center . We learned that birds that hunt for food, such as eagles, falcons and owls, are known as birds of prey or raptors. We also learned that vultures are not predators but decomposers. They don’t have the sharp talons that actual predators have.

We also attended a Live Bird Encounter. Yes, we met, McKenzie the Owl. We learned that owls although have binocular vision, their large eyes are fixed in their sockets, as with other birds, and they must turn their entire head to change views (actually they can turn their heads up to 270 degrees). Also owls like to hunt skunks at night.

In the prey center we also saw other predators and figured out what type of food chain was here at the high desert: Producers are all trees that have seed cones (conifers) such as the ponderosa trees, manzanita, bitterbrush, lodgepole and others. First consumers are flying skirrels and other small mammals such us mice. Second consumers are birds of prey, as our friend McKenzie, the owl. And vultures act as the decomposers.

Around 11:30 am we went to the exhibition “Spirit of the West.” Through detailed experiential dioramas in Spirit of the West, we witnessed how native american lived, why fur traders came to the region, what were the trade forts for, what were the troubles that entailed traveling the Oregon Trail, when did hard metal and gold miners came to the region, how a buckaroo spent his time and how did a town look like during the XIX century.

After having lunch we sat around the entrance of the museum and listened to the Matsiko Children Choir from Uganda who are touring Central Oregon this week. These children’s choir is part of the International Children’ s Network . Their “open-source” approach, allows people to sponsor children in need and bring them hope and love. It was wonderful to see these about 30 children sing and dance, and we talked a little bit with some of them. We took pictures with Mauro and Bruno.

Click in the followinglink to watch a video of theBulletMatsiko Children’s Choir on Seattle KOMO-TV

After the cheerful Matsiko Children presentation we visited the By Hand Through Memory where we learned about the Indian nations of the Columbia River Plateau as they traveled from reservation confinement to the 21st century.

Around 1:30 pm, despite the rain we went outside to visit the Autzen Otter Exhibit, where we saw Thomas swimming and showing off. Then we visited the Lazinka Sawmill, and the 1880 High Desert Homestead Ranch where we finished our worksheet packet. Yeahhhh!

At 2:15 pm we loaded the bus and returned home with many of the fun-filled learning experiences still spinning in our heads.

Apr

19

2nd High Desert Inter-Cultural Festival, April 12, 2008 - Redmond, Oregon

April 19, 2008 | | Leave a Comment


2nd High Desert Inter-Cultural Festival, April 12, 2008 - Redmond, Oregon from Pia Alliende on Vimeo.

The 2nd annual High Desert Inter-Cultural Festival, A Day of Unity among Different Cultures presented by R.I.C.E. - Redmond Inter-Cultural Exchange was hosted at the International School of the Cascades, Redmond High School- Hartman Campus last Saturday April 12, 2008.

Visitors learned about other cultures and customs through displays of culturally-specific items, music, food, workshops and friendly conversation.

The following countries/cultures where represented: Colombia, Thailand, Germans from Russia, Paraguay, Venezuela, Hellenic Society, Panama, USA/Americana, Native American, Mexico, Costa Rica, Nicaragua (Condega), Philippines, Peru, Chile, Bolivia, Ecuador, Celtic Society, Japan, Ivory Coast of Africa and Guatemala.

Other activities included: musical performances, dance performances and instruction, art including a Japanese calligraphy workshop, kids activities and multi-cultural story times provided by Deschutes Library, Cuban and African drumming workshops.

Students from the International School of the Cascades volunteered. It was a pleasure to see them mingling with the public and presenters and see everybody having a blast.

Walking through the main hall felt like walking through a wonderful International market. Thanks R.I.C.E. for organizing this fantastic event for our community.

Mar

22

Central Oregon Spring: March 21, 2008

March 22, 2008 | | 1 Comment


March 21st, 2008 from sunrise to sunset
Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

Mar

19

Marco Antonio Torres’ Digital Storytelling Workshop at ITSC, Portland, Feb. 18, 2008

March 19, 2008 |  Tagged , , , , | Leave a Comment

Took me a while to find the right site to upload videos larger than 100 MB and also to figure out that edublogs accepted them. I tried with Flektor but didn’t work. A week ago I discover Vimeo which is the flikr of the video community. I love it! Now I can post my video of Marco Torres‘ Digital Storytelling workshop that I attended at ITSC in Portland last month.!!!

 

One of the things I really like about Torres is that él mata dos pájaros de un tiro when he reaches his audience: his love for digital storytelling and real things that really matter or should matter. He was also the one of the Keynote Speakers. At the end, I told him that he has coraje. In his keynote and also his workshop, he did not only talk about technicalities but real things that are happening in the US, that everybody has to pay attention to, especially us as educators.
At the workshop I attended on Monday Feb. 19, when he was talking about audio issues for storytelling, he let us listen subtlety or maybe bluntly to the podcast of Richard Rodriguez in NPR’s All Things Considered from April 5, 2006 “Thanking Immigrants for the Myriad Jobs They Do”
When I saw Marco Antonio showing us the podcast, I decided also to “kill two birds with the same shot”: film the faces in the audiences while recording the podcast.

 

Marco Torres at ITSC, Portland February 18, 2008 from Pia Alliende on Vimeo.Sos grande Marco Antonio!!!

 

Feb

18

99 resources to research & mine the invisible web

February 18, 2008 | | Leave a Comment

Some of the people in charge of this site sent me an email suggesting me to look at these links, and  mention it in my blog :-). I don’t know how they got a hold of me, but I really like the suggestions.

99 Resources to Research & Mine the Invisible Web - College Degree.com

Feb

9

50 Web 2.0 Ways to Tell a Story according to Alan Levine

February 9, 2008 |  Tagged , , , , | Leave a Comment

I found on Alan Levine’s wiki CogDogRoo a great list of web 2.0 tools to tell a story. Levine used this wiki for a workshop he did in Australia in October 2007. What I really like about the list is that is annotated and divided in different categories: Slide show tools, Timeline tools, Mixer tools,Comic tools, Scrapbook tools, Map tools, Flickr tools/Ideas, Audio
tools, Video tools, Presentation tools and New Tools.

All of the tools we have explored in our school district 23 Things for telling stories such as Toondoo, Scrapblog, Slideshare are on Levine’s list. It’s amazing that there are more than 50 tools out there!

Anyway, the workshop is called 50 Web 2.0 Ways to Tell a Story and has three easy steps with guidelines on how to create a story. Number 3 has the list of 50 web 2.0 tools to tell a story. Number 2 “Find some media” is a very useful guideline since shows links to sites were you can find images, audio, videos without infringing copyrights. He
mentions THE RULE in section 2 of the workshop

“Now here is a our rule- the media files you use in your story have to be ones that are licensed or shared with permission to re-use; this is the only way you can safely then share your new creation knowing it does not contain any copyrighted material. So just finding a picture via Google is not satisfactory. For each media file you find, document the source by title and URL and find a person or organization to use to give credit.” Levine, Alan. “Finding Media for Your Story.” 14 Oct. 2007. 50 Web 2.0 Ways to Tell a Story. CogDoogRooWiki: Alan’s Levine October 2007 Trip Down Under. 9 Feb. 2008. <http://cogdogroo.wikispaces.com/StoryMedia>.

So, we need to remember that when we share, we also need to be respectful of other people’s work. We need to be an example to our students and raise our expectations by teaching our students about copyrights and how to avoid plagiarism.

Here are the links to Levine’s step for telling a story with 2.0 web tools:

  1. Outline a Story Idea
  2. Find Some Media
  3. Pick a Tool to Build Your Story

He has another workshop called Precious Web 2.0 Gems

Feb

3

Super Bowl–Exploiting the Ads from Joyce Valenza’s Blog

February 3, 2008 | | Leave a Comment

As soon as the Super-Bowl was over, Joyce Valenza posted a fun way of using it’s commercials in the classroom. As usual, it amazes me her fast way of keeping her blog alive and current. It makes me feel completely dumb. Good things she is there blogging :-)

http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/blog/1340000334/post/520021252.html?nid=3714

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