musings

Posted on by Dominic Salvucci Cool Stuff, Random Musings, Rants

Fear of Technology…so unfounded…

This post was originally posted in my Substack.

Yesterday, I had an unexpected change in plans. Instead of my usual Saturday routine, Zoom meeting with the PAECT President, recording my class podcast, and grading student work, I spent the day away from home with a family health issue. All is well now, but my usual schedule was thrown off.

Those who know me, yes my OCD flared up, but I was able to switch up and work on some class tasks using…mobile technology. Accomplishing a lot during down time and saving me from wasting more time today to get caught up, plus work on my usual Sunday routine. 

Many people fear technology and do not see a use for it in an educational setting. Technology, mobile technology specifically, gave me the ability to be away from home and still be productive with my classwork. I set up lessons, adjusted information for my classes, built out resources, all from a remote location. 

None of this could be accomplished without mobile technology, don’t fear it, learn how to use it efficiently. 

Leave a comment Posted on by Dominic Salvucci class work, Musings, Random Musings

FID Day: A More Accurate Attendance Model?

Flexible Instruction Days, FIDs, some people like them, others do not. I personally prefer them over straight cancelations. The debate over these days is not a topic for this post. The focus of this post is going to be tracking my students’ attendance. I discussed this on the PAECT Pod last night, January 21, 2025.

Our school gives students several days to complete remote instruction assignments on these days. I see no problem with that at all, students may or may not have issues accessing the Internet on these days. If you have students with siblings in school, their Internet connection may be taxed to the limit if they are all pullling bandwidth at the same time. The assignments I give students to complete are set up so even students who have unrelable Internet can complete them. The issue I run into as a teacher is that I have students who will forget to turn in assignments, be they on paper or digital in nature, even when in the physical classroom, as I remind them, and ask them, and double check with them, to please submit their assignments. I still have students who will walk out of class without turning in work they completed.

On a FID Day, yes I know adding “Day” to “FID” is redundant, but I like it. On a FID Day, that could be  even more of a negative issue. Not only do I not see the students’ completed work, but they do not get credit for being “present” in class online that day. That can pose a problem. I understand about personal responsibility and such, but from a bureaucratic standpoint it hurts the school and makes my life much more difficult atttempting to rectify attendance. I found a way to simplify attendance, which I wish I would have thought of sooner.

My easy-peasy solution, a ONE POINT ASSIGNMENT, students log into Schoology, our district’s LMS, and go to the current day’s folder. I post what they are to do for the FID Day, and the first assignment is a one question task. Students click “Submit” and type in Schoology, “YES” that they are online. That does not skewer grades, it is just one point, but that gives me proof of their attendance for the day.

There are more detailed tasks they have to complete for class and those vary from day to day. Students must take responsiblility for submitting those for credit, but attendance is no longer complicated. The tasks count for meaningful points and they can be one with limited bandwidth from home. As meentioned previously, they have several days to complete those assignments, so we can work through any complications.

I wish I would have thought of this idea sooner.

 

 

Posted on by Dominic Salvucci Musings

Creative Writing

This post was originally posted in my Substack.

I need to get back into writing creatively. I write a lot for work and for my professional development, however I have pretty much stopped writing creatively…for fun…to keep my mind sharp…keep my creativity flowing…and as a form of therapy. 

Wattpad allows me to write on the fly on my phone, so it is more typing on the fly. I sometimes carry and small notepad to jot ideas, and story parts, and poems, and miscellaneous thoughts down. Easier to do when wearing old man cargo pants.

I need to get back to this. To do so, I need to MAKE THE TIME. Let’s see what happens.

Posted on by Dominic Salvucci class work, Cool Stuff, Random Musings, Student Stuff

Gen Alpha: What a Different Perspective

In my US History class we were discussing rationing and the black markets of World War Two. I asked the class what they envisioned black markets looked like or where they too place and what black marketeers looked like. Man, was I surprised.

I know Gen Z and Gen Alpha perceive the world differently than me and my fellow Gen Xers and Millennials, but a student’s comments totally blindsided me.

The student responded to my queries by saying when they thought of the balck market they thought of the Internet and a hacker as a black marketeer.

This is a far cry from my first thoughts of the black market being an alleyway, vacant building, or the trunk on a late 1970’s Pontiac. A black marketeer to me is a shady character in a trench coat or maybe a Robert DeNiro type from Goodfellas.

The difference between the two views was canyon-like, I realize the Internet and “Dark Web” have a plethora of ways to buy contraband, however the generational divide with my students was such that they did not envision my concept of a black market or black marketeer.

It makes me wonder how many others concepts we differ on.

Leave a comment Posted on by Dominic Salvucci Random Musings, Rants

“What Is” or “The Importance of Relaxation”

So, Summer 2024 is not only upon us, it seems as if it is almost over. July 4th usually brings the “Back to School Supplies” displays to the area stores, which in turn sets my brain into school starts soon mode. This year the the displays were seen toward the end of June in stores that will remain unnamed, I will not give them free advertising here, no matter how small the audience. Last week when looking for a replacement umbrella for my deck, I came across HALLOWEEN DISPLAYS!?!?!?! 

What is my point, you may ask? We as a society are always in a rush to get to the next moment in time, or event. (I am struggling with vocabulary as I write this, I have the Weather Channel playing in the background, which is offsetting my focus.) Be they small events or major milestones, we are always looking to the next step once we reach the most current checkpoint. This behavior is disturbing, to say the least. Many people, myself included, are so focused on what is next that we are missing out on “What Is.” 

“What Is” is in the moment, it should be enjoyed, we should let the good “What Is” moments wash over us and savor them. The “what’s next “will still be there, sometimes looming, sometimes roaring at us like a freight train, but we need to savor the “What Is.” As I sometimes rush through my morning espresso so I can move on to the next task or event, I thought why even drink the espresso if I am just going to slurp it down? There is no enjoyment in it, it is just a routine, but not enjoyable. I am not alone in this, I see others all the time in a rush to move on to the next meme, the next TikTok, the next .gif, the next selfie, the next amusement park ride, etc, while not truly appreciating the “What Is Now.”

Last year, I focused on “Intentionality” as my goal for the school year, I was somewhat successful, but I still have more work to do in building that skill.  This year I will add focusing on enjoying the “What Is” to that skill set. I need to relearn how to relax and enjoy the moment and not rush on to the next. I needed to be reminded by THIS SONG from the B-52’s, one of my favorite songs of all time. (As I watched the video to make sure it was appropriate to link to this blog, I became antsy, thinking of when should I go make my espresso. I resisted multitasking, but it proves that I have much more work to do focusing on the “What Is,” relaxing, and enjoying the moment.) 

Stop, Take a Deep Breath, Look Around You, Enjoy the Moment if it is a Positive.

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Time Management: A skill that I need to improve upon

During the PAECT Book Study, I am currently participating in, Thrive Through Five by Dr. Jill  M. Siler, the concept of time management keeps coming up. Admittedly, time management is not one of my strong suites, I know this detail will astonish those who know me well…😂😂😂😂.

In my mind, I do my best work when under pressure from a looming deadline, I understand that is not the most efficient way to function and I preach to my daughter and my students all the time to not make the same such mistake.

Old habits are hard to break? I will get to it first thing in the morning? I’m just not feeling it at this minute? I deserve a break? Yes, these are just some of the rationalizations I have used, “?” placed since often I am not declaring the weak reasons, they are said in a questioning, apprehensive tone.

The Zoom session this past week focused on self-care and taking time for oneself. I brought up one of my self-care/self-improvement plans, better time management. I am a creature of habit/patterns. I like my routines. My plan is to build time management into my life pattern. I am trying to block out time or at least manage chunks of time each day for various tasks I need to complete.

Book study reading and notetaking, a chapter at a time, laundry or some sort of inside work, one or two tasks at a clip. Jump in to work on my presentation for ISTELive24 or the KTI Summit. Make time for family, throw in some yardwork before I hit the pool, and pleasure reading for a few minutes at a time. I try to complete a variety of tasks each day, is it hectic, yes, is it productive, seems to be, is it efficient, who knows? It, much like I, am a work in progress, we will see how this effort goes this summer.

Posted on by Dominic Salvucci Cool Stuff, Random Musings, Student Stuff

SketchNoting

I am participating in a PAECT Book Study, the book is Thrive Through the Five, by Dr. Jill M. Siler. At the end of each chapter, she includes a Sketchnote of ideas to summarize the chapter content. I attended a series of webinars through PAECT on Sketchnoting with Sylvia Duckworth, and have shown the concept to my classes. I need to revisit this skill over the summer and utilize it in my classes for my more visual learners. I am not adept enough of an artist to Sketchnote while taking notes, I would focus too much on the art and lose the content. I am better at revisiting the content after I take notes in a traditional format and converting them into images.

I will add this to my Summer To-Do List.

Leave a comment Posted on by Dominic Salvucci Class Updates, Cool Stuff, Lessons and Teacher Things, PAECT Pod, Random Musings, Student Projects

Old Guy Moments…Argh!

So, AI is all the RAGE or FEAR depending on your view of the future…of education…of the world…of humanity. I believe it is here to stay, at least in some form, just like the Internet, Google, Wikipedia, Web 2.0, and other forms of technology. I have been playing/experimenting with it for a while now, I want to learn more so I can address it APPROPRIATELY with my students. There will be other posts on that later, or you can listen to our discussions on the PAECT Pod. I am off-topic from the start of this post…let’s redirect…

For my classes Civil Rights/Black History Month Projects we once again were creating video projects, this time using Canva.  I have some students who are a bit shy and do not like recording their voices for projects.  The idea was to find a TEXT TO SPEECH TOOL my students could use for their projects, like VOKI. I went through my lists of resources from my PLN and Google and played with other free AI tools.  Some worked, but some were not really free if you wanted to download and use the text-to-voice file elsewhere.  Students used several of the free tools, one that worked well, we broke when it read every student using it in our building as the same user.  It found us “SUS” and shut down our attempts.  I have to reach out to them and see if I can correct that issue.

Anyways, yesterday I had a student who had been absent finishing up their project, but could not record audio due to losing their voice from illness,  Instead of going to Wakelet to look over my curated resources, I had the student open up the apps tab in Canva…THERE IT WAS THE ENTIRE TIME!!!! A TEXT-TO-VOICE app right within the tool we were using!!!!  ARGH!!!!  In the immortal words of Mr. Dierks Bentley, “What was I thinking!” Murf.AI was right there.  We connected through Google, and the student copied and pasted their script from Google Docs into the Canva-connected app which automatically pushed the audio into their project.  No downloading MP3s uploading MP3s then dropping them in to the projects, which is easy enough, but this is integrated right in the same program.

Why I did not check on this first, I have not a clue, but alas and alack, I now know better. I learned from my error, which I attribute to my age…yes, it is a low-hanging fruit of an excuse, but it works today.

Below are screen shots of Canva and Murf.AI along with an embedded video made with that app.

Search for Murf.AI in apps.


Create or log into your account, we used our school Googler Signins.

You can choose which voice to use, some are PRO Account only.

Choose tone of voice and type in or copy and paste what you want the app to say.

You can test the voice and adjust as you feel is necessary. When you are satisfied, click “Add to design.” Once you add the audio, you may need to adjust the length of your clip to get the audio and image to match up.

Granted, there are limitations to what AI can accomplish at this time.

 

Leave a comment Posted on by Dominic Salvucci Class Updates, class work, Random Musings, Student Projects, Student Stuff

A Bit About Me

Students have completed this short project for my class over the last couple of years., This year they asked me to complete a copy.  Here it is:

I think it is important to build connections and let the students see “behind the curtain” if you will.  We as teachers are not perfect, we make mistakes, and we enjoy life outside of the classroom.  Students need to see those characteristics in us.