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Morphie’s GREAT WATER RIDE Adventure Meet Morphie, a raindrop who travels, magically changes shape and form (hence his name), and shows us how many things water can do as he “rides” the water cycle. Use the story of Morphie’s adventures as: • A downloadable, read-aloud poem, to make young children aware of the wonders of water in our lives • An illustrated, interactive on-line water adventure for classroom computer use Morphie’s rhyming story is a complement to science learning, and an invitation to investigate more about the properties, uses, vocabulary and responsible care of fresh water. Ways to use Morphie’s Great Water Ride Adventure as a teaching aid: • As a whole narrative, to introduce and/or sum up water concepts presented in Grade 2 science • In parts, to illustrate the many different aspects of water in our lives and in the natural environment (through science, art, language) • On a computer for children (in the classroom, or at home to read with parents) • As a theme for related cross-curricular activities, demonstrations and extensions (see below)

he Networked Student was inspired by CCK08, a Connectivism course offered by George Siemens and Stephen Downes during fall 2008. It depicts an actual project completed by Wendy Drexler's high school students. The Networked Student concept map was inspired by Alec Couros' Networked Teacher. I hope that teachers will use it to help their colleagues, parents, and students understand networked learning in the 21st century.Anyone is free to use this video for educational purposes. You may download, translate, or use as part of another presentation. Please share.

The Networked Student was inspired by CCK08, a Connectivism course offered by George Siemens and Stephen Downes during fall 2008. It depicts an actual project completed by Wendy Drexler's high school students. The Networked Student concept map was inspired by Alec Couros' Networked Teacher. I hope that teachers will use it to help their colleagues, parents, and students understand networked learning in the 21st century.Anyone is free to use this video for educational purposes. You may download, translate, or use as part of another presentation. Please share.

The Visible Body is a fantastic, free, program that allows your students to virtually explore all systems of the human body. I first learned about the Visible Body through Kevin Jarrett's blog, he used the program with a 4th grade class, but the Visible Body could just as well be used in a high school setting. In fact, the reason that I thought about the Visible Body today is that a science teacher in my school mentioned that she has used it with her anatomy students.

To use the Visible Body you need to install the Unity Web Player for Mac or PC. Once installed you can explore all of the systems of the body. The Visible Body allows students to view bones, muscles, and organs from various perspectives and see how the parts of the body work together as a system.

Update: Kevin Jarrett reminds us in the comments that if you're going to use Visible Body with younger students be aware that Visible Body is 100% anatomically correct. In that case it's probably best to use Visible Body as a teacher-directed exercise and not a individualized activity.

The Khan Academy is a not-for-profit organization with the mission of providing a high quality education to anyone, anywhere. We have 700+ videos on YouTube covering everything from basic arithmetic and algebra to differential equations, physics, and finance which have been recorded by Salman Khan. He has also developed a free, adaptive math program available here.

Picture a bus. Your students are standing in the front; most teachers (maybe even you) are in the back, hanging on to the seat straps as the bus careens down the road under the guidance of kids who have never been taught to steer and who are figuring it out as they go.

In short, for a host of reasons, we're failing to empower kids to use one of the most important technologies for learning that we've ever had. One of the biggest challenges educators face right now is figuring out how to help students create, navigate, and grow the powerful, individualized networks of learning that bloom on the Web and helping them do this effectively, ethically, and safely. The new literacy means being able to function in and leverage the potential of easy-to-create, collaborative, transparent online groups and networks, which represent a "tectonic shift" in the way we need to think about the world and our place in it (Shirky, 2008). This shift requires us to create engaged learners, not simply knowers, and to reconsider the roles of schools and educators.

As the geeky father

One Laptop per Child designer Yves Behar (watch for his TEDTalk, posting tomorrow) shares exciting news about the top-to-bottom redesign of the XO laptop. He writes: With the XO (1.0), we pushed the boundaries of what a laptop could be by lowering the cost dramatically, being green (no heavy metals, lowest energy consumption ever), and a human-driven unique design approach.

The back channel isn’t just a social space. I noted three distinct, valuable uses of back channels at WebWise:To communicate socially in an environment that does not permit open dialogue. This is the "note passing" or flirting use case.To share your onsite experience with a network of people who are not co-located with you. Where the first use case serves co-located people, this use case focuses on broadcasting the highlights of your experience to friends elsewhere.To investigate a content experience more deeply using a different set of tools than those used to convey the content. For example, you may listen to a speaker and check out related links from his work as he talks.

Maybe we need to find common ground among the teachers and administrators at our schools. Take the word “technology” out of the discussion. That word seems to mean too many different things to too many different people (even scare). Maybe we need to be talking about something no one can deny as a priority in our schools: STUDENT LEARNING. Maybe we if we talk on that common ground,  there will be less resistance, more collaboration and communication on how to achieve that.

The conductor of an orchestra does not make a sound…he depends for his power on his ability of making other people powerful.

Darren Kuropatwa and participants from an international PLP cohort collaboratively worked on a presentation titled : Teaching Well.

Rheingold points to five reasons for teaching students social media: Developing students' literacy in our new online environment is as crucial as developing their abilities to read and write. Communication is moving toward social media. We can either help students thrive in this environment or leave them flailing. Many students bring their computers to class. Why not work with this trend instead of fighting or ignoring it? Social media is just that: social. Students who use Twitter for class are "learning collaborative skills that are particularly important today." There is only so much class time. Rheingold makes mini-lectures on video that students comment on between classes, allowing more time to engage the issues through in-class discussion. Shy students who hold back in class often speak up online. "If you can extend the discussion to an online message board, you enable students who may not jump into the discussion," he said, to "make a thoughtful contribution."

But not all students are part of these learning networks and the content coverage is not always comprehensive. Therefore, educators must work to ensure that students gain these skills (Jenkins, et al., 2008). Rheingold (n.d.), who as he puts it “fell into the computer realm from the typewriter dimension,” is also working to change the belief that all students are tech–savvy by bringing emerging technologies — blogs, wikis, videos — into the college classroom (Rheingold, 2008; Young, 2008). His project is called the “Social Media Virtual Classroom” and is designed to expose students to “participatory media” in order to promote civic engagement.

The Collier County School Board recently voted to change the student code of conduct regarding cell phones and, in the process, expanded the code to allow schools to petition to allow students to use their phones in the classroom — to some exte

The Collier County School Board recently voted to change the student code of conduct regarding cell phones and, in the process, expanded the code to allow schools to petition to allow students to use their phones in the classroom — to some extent.

“There are many educational things that you can use phones to do. The principals want to use the phone as an educational tool in the classroom.”