Phenomenal global collaboration project involving students from 15 countries. Teaching assignment is replicated across continents. Last year's project, Rock n Sol, was featured in the California K-12 Technology Showcase. This year's project, "Are You Game" focuses on digital storytelling. Students collaborate to compose music, make movies, podcasts, and experiments and met in face to face video-conferences. Using Garage Band, kids annually create a collaborative song that has been touched in every continent in the world. Each week, each group contributes 30 seconds with a specific musical instrument. Even blind students are involved in the project.
We need to stop talking cyberbullying and start talking cybercitizenship. Flip to the positive. Our focus in schools needs to shift towards responsible, positive use of social media. We need to stop ignoring and blocking and start embracing and amplifying. It is our duty to our students to start modeling responsible use of social media and encouraging them to follow our lead.
Founded in 1995 as a concerned response to the ever-increasing deluge of messages youth receive from television, radio, film, print media, electronic games, and the Internet, Just Think teaches young people media literacy skills for the 21st century.
The modern American school faces rough challenges. Budget cuts have caused ballooning class sizes, many teachers struggle with poorly motivated students, and in many schools a war is being waged on distracting technologies. In response, innovative educators are embracing social media to fight back against the onslaught of problems. Technologies such as Twitter and Skype offer ideal solutions as inexpensive tools of team-based education.
Ben Rigby and Rock the Vote have put together a book for activists, politicos, and organizers called "Mobilizing Generation 2.0: A Practical Guide to Using Web 2.0." It is a how-to guide to help those who want to mobilize using the web, focusing on how organizers can leverage blogging, social network sites, photo/video sharing, mobile phones, wikis, maps and virtual worlds.