Project 365 and Project 52

For Christmas this year, Santa brought me a new iPhone 4S. I love it! It is so much faster then my older iPhone 3G and the High Definition camera is great. With this new tool, I have decided to commit myself to two year long projects this year as a New Year's resolution to hone my photography and filming skills.

Many of you have heard of Project 365, and I have had the app on my phone pretty much since I had purchased the older 3G, however, I never made it past two pictures on the yearly calendar. Well, with the new camera in the iPhone 4S, and our brand new daughter at home (now 3 months), it seems like a perfect match for this project. My plan is to take a picture of Elsa, our baby girl, next to a window each day for the Project 365. At the end, I would like to create a YouTube video of her growth throughout the year as the seasons change out the window. Hopefully I can share this project with my daughter when she is old enough to appreciate it. It's a long road, but so far I am 5 for 5.

This picture was taken before Project 365 started on January 1st.

My other year long goal is to work on my filming skills. I have always been a fan of the movies, and as a young boy I used my father's old video camera to make small movies using my sister's Barbie dolls, or my Lego sets in a stop motion scene, or reenacted fun scenes with my friends out in our backyard. Well, now that I am equipped with an HD camera in my pocket on the new iPhone 4S, I plan to create mini clips each week to better my skills in filming and play around with some apps for special effects. I think this task would be impossible, unless I quit my day job, to publish each day to YouTube, however, once a week seems manageable to me so I will call it Project 52.

This is a clip I created with a 5th grade student using the app "Action Movie" on the iPhone and a green screen to complete the backdrop.

My intent with these two year long projects is to hone my own skills, but to also use these as models to inspire other educators in and out of my district, as well as students to take learning beyond the classroom. I'm certainly not a professional photographer or filmographer, but it's important to share my trials and tribulations with students to showcase that it takes time and practice to get good at something. It's important that educators and schools allow students to try something and fail once or twice before they are expected to master something. This is something that seems to be escaping us in public education, and I fear that true learning, through real hands-on experimentation, may decrease in our curriculum unless we do something about it.

Reflection on Project 365 and Project 52

My first personal reflections of the project are that this will take a great deal of effort and time, but I believe it is worth it. In my Project 365 theme, I realized that I don't always get home in time to "see" the weather outside the window, and therefore you cannot see what it looks like in Maine at this time of year, however, daylight and time change may be something I will use to reinforce and skirt my problem. (Also, there is no snow on the ground right now to see in Southern Maine anyhow.)

On my clip above for my Project 52 entry, I realize that we need a bigger green screen. I would love to convert one of our double wide trailers "parked" outside of the school as an extended classroom into a production studio and paint the entire inside chroma key green for student projects. That way we wouldn't have to figure out where to hang the old green cloth, or find more green poster paper. I'll keep working though. After all, I have 365 days to better my skills. Cheers!

eNewsletter and Happy New Year!

It's that time of year again, where everyone reflects on the past year and sets goals, or New Year's resolutions, to better themselves for the upcoming year. As a technology integration specialist, and a member of our district's 21st Century Team, my work this year has been focused on what I can do to help inspire, promote and assist other educators to dive into creating and administering enriching lessons that ask students to solve problems using 21st century skills.

I have to admit there has been a lot of talk about theory and planning for what we can do in the upcoming year, but ultimately our district team, like many others across our nation, have regurgitated 21st century skills to our peers, but have not really defined the purpose for implementing this important task on our teachers.

My biggest goal for this upcoming year, is to model 21st century skills by creating, collaborating, solving complex or open ended problems, and publishing these ideas and strategies to a global audience. Why? Well, because there has been enough talk in mind. It's time to actually put this plan into action. I may crash and burn, but at least I will have practiced what I preach. After all, there is a problem on the table here; How do we prepare our students of today for jobs and careers of the future? There is no set answer, so I will offer one or more solutions and allow my online profession learning network to comment and offer feedback. My hopes are to inspire others to take the lead with me, and jump head first into a new educational paradigm.

My final class for my master's degree is an introductory course on teaching online for grades K-12. Curriculum has always been a passion of mine, and the ability to infuse and embed technology to enhance the lesson has always been something I strongly valued. That's how I fell upon the job of an integration specialist for a school district focused on grades K-4. I also feel that project based learning, game based learning, and creativity can provide an education for our students better than any programmed curriculum or standardized testing that the local district, state or nation believe provides the best assessment of learning strategies and student comprehension.

In my latest eNewsletter, I reflect on the past year a bit, but look towards the future and offer some insight into my goals for the coming year, and what I believe will truly prepare our students for what may lie ahead for them in their own careers. Please feel free to comment and offer feedback. Where is your district headed towards infusing 21st century skills across the curriculum?

Flat Stanley Project

Last night, at our district school board meeting, three 4th grade students, their teacher, and our building principal presented their Virtual Flat Stanley projects to our community via public access television. Every year our 4th graders at Coastal Ridge Elementary School send out a flat version of themselves to family, friends and friends-of-friends all over the world hoping to get a feel for the cultural that their flat versions of themselves will "see" while they are visiting. It's truly amazing to see their enthusiastic faces when packages arrive via snail mail to the school full of photos, brochures, and souvenirs from lands afar accompanied by their folded up flat self.

As adults we have taken for granted receiving mail through the postal service as we have grown up with that form of communication, and probably do not really care if we receive it via a mailbox or in our email inbox any more. Well, unless it's a package. We all love getting packages in the mail. The kids, on the other hand, do not have much experience with writing and receiving actual tangible letters and packages in the mail any more, and their eyes just light up when something comes to the school addressed to them. It's like Christmas morning to them!

After opening their packages and sharing with the rest of their classmates all about their flat selves' visit to lands beyond our little community, they start converting everything to digital format. Photos are scanned in, brochures, posters and souvenirs are captured via a document camera or webcam. The students in Miss Switzer's class then compile all of their digital artifacts and create mini web pages using Apple's iWeb to share what they have learned through their 2D portrayal's travels. This is exactly what the students were presenting to our school board and community last night. The students did a fabulous job and their web pages, each individual unique, are on display for the whole world to see. This is a wonderful project, and everyone in Miss Switzer's class should feel very proud of their accomplishments!

Check out all of the students' web pages on Miss Switzer's Flat Stanley Project page.

Holiday Wish Lists

In my latest eNewsletter for December to the staff at both Village Elementary School and Coastal Ridge Elementary School, I mentioned how "game changers", like Apple's iPad 2, are revolutionizing how students are learning in our elementary classrooms. You only have to look as far as the Auburn School District in Auburn, Maine, which hosted an international conference during the Thanksgiving week, to see how these technologies are enhancing education. The school district allowed educators from all over the world to observe how tablets and other technologies are being used in their elementary classrooms to inspire and engage all students. Visitors were welcomed into classrooms and attended conferences after school hours to learn first hand from teachers and students how these technologies have changed the face of education in their district. Online streams, blogs and Tweets were presented by educators and students to members watching online as well. Students are learning through designated applications that focus on particular skills or problem solving strategies, and finding that Game-Based Learning is fun and engaging.


Game-Based Learning is not a new concept. The Everyday Math program really opened my eyes to this form of teaching style when the school district I used to work for adopted the program in 2002. Instead of rote math facts done over-and-over again to promote mastery, games were created and played to practice math facts and computations that were inspiring, engaging and exciting to the students. I learned first-hand as a third grade teacher that students were picking up on these skills much faster with game play then using more traditional methods of work sheets and practice papers. With the overly popular iOS devices in classrooms, iPads and iPods can be used to allow students to work on particular skills by playing games. Games also provide solid feedback to the child and a raw score to the educator, or parent, as another form of data of the students’ learning.


Game-Based Learning can take a bit of time to research which are the best apps for your child, but in the long-run can truly be the catalyst that engages all of your learners at your house and individualizes their educational path to meet their individual needs. As gift lists are being created for the holidays, and smart phones are being upgraded, remember that your child could benefit from educational Game-Based Learning at home too! I am hoping that the big guy will upgrade my iPhone this year, and in return I will transform my old iPhone 3G into an iPod for my little girl full of preschool and baby genius apps for the upcoming year. I can't wait to start family game night at my house with a balance of electronic and non-electronic games.


Eric Lawson has been teaching for 12 years. He has previously taught 3rd grade in Kennebunk before taking on the job of Technology Integration Specialist for the elementary schools here in York. He has been published in eSchool News, Tech&Learning Magazine and Learning and Leading with Technology Magazine for technology integrated projects and ideas. He is the author of the blog, "Computer Lab Without Walls", and offers extra curricular courses integrating technology through the York Parks and Recreation Department and Adult Education Programs. 

Game-Based Learning

In this edition of the December eNewsletter, I have included some great resources and links for bringing Game-Based Learning into the classroom. How is Game-Based Learning being used in your classroom or school?

A World Without Power

During the Halloween weekend, the east coast got pounded with it's first big Noreaster of the season. Living in Maine, I have grown accustom to the long winters, but starting in October is a bit ridiculous even for our standards. At my house we only lost power for about 27 hours, but many people around us and certainly in southern New Hampshire lost it for almost an entire week. It got me to thinking...

We truly have started to become completely dependent on technology and the ease of accessibility anywhere at any time. I was thinking to myself, that I really had to mail in my assignment on Saturday before the storm hit, because my town of Wells, Maine has become a ghost town now that the tourist and "leaf peepers" season is officially over. It would have taken me 30 minutes to drive to a coffee shop with free Wi-Fi.

A colleague and I were discussing that the future of the military will probably no longer be investing so highly in explosives but rather in new technologies like Pulses and Pinches. These are like mini generators that when activated, will actually take out an area completely so that there is no power. The scene from "Ocean's 11" where they are ready to rob Andy Garcia's casino comes rushing back to my mind.

We were fortunate enough to have power back on at school on Monday when we returned, but it took 3.5 hours for the IT department to get our network and Internet connection back online. I truly felt useless at school in those hours and couldn't even access my calendar to see whom I needed to postpone our meeting with as it was locked up in our network.

eNewsletter November

In this month's edition of my eNewsletter, I dive a little deeper into the Apple iOS update and what it means in an educational setting.