Park Center Legislator Video Project

Students and staff at Park Center Senior High collaborated to create a 10-minute video to highlight the school's successes in closing the educational gaps between white students and students of color. The video was shown to Minnesota State Legislators attending the district's annual meeting with them, which was held at Park Center on February 5th this year. Superintendent Kate Maguire, School Board members, and other stakeholders made presentations based on the district's legislative platform. The video is below. A less-finished channel 12 report about the project is also featured here.

Video created by students and staff above.

Channel 12 feature about the video production. 

Mobile Device Tips

The 23 Mobile Things Mobile Device Tips and Tricks tool (tool #2) was quite a lengthy one for me, but valuable. I am new to Android phones, so it was good to learn more about the settings, etc. However, I often found the instructions vague at the recommended site for my Samsung Galaxy S. It is worth the time to set up your mobile device how you want it, with all of the functions that Smart phones have to offer today. To find tips and tricks for yours, either go to the first link on this page or do a web search for your device or operating system type followed by "tips OR tricks."

Park Center Senior High Video Shows Ways to Decrease Racial Disparities

As a means for presenting information to visiting Minnesota State Legislators, a handful of Park Center Senior High students and staff collaborated to create this video that demonstrates ways that Park Center has increased the the graduation rate of black students to the highest degree of any high school with a population of over 50 students in the State. Credit is owed partially to compensatory and achievement and integeration funding passed by the State Legislature. I am proud to be a member of the community responsible for this decrease in racial disparities as well as part of the team to produce this video. The student involvement in the creation of this video was enormous. Students in the International Baccalaureate Film class and the TV Production class spent many hours filming and editing, under the guidance of teachers and school administrators. Check out the results for yourself! Park Center Senior High closing racially-based educational disparities.

23 Mobile Things 1: Setting up a blog

I am registering for the 23 Mobile Things program, sponsored by Minnesota's multitype libraries. The idea is to learn about 23 applications that can be used on mobile devices and to blog about them as you learn. The first "thing" is to start a blog. Since I recently started this new one, with the focus on creating ditties for student mnemonic content retention, I thought that I would include a link to the ditty that I wrote about the mission of the Minnesota Educational Media Organization (MEMO), whose name, by the way, is about to change to Information and Technology Educators of Minnesota (ITEM). Here is a link to that ditty.