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The student blogging challenge starts next week. Here's the page to register your class. Remember, you can choose which challenges to participate in. It's a great way to build an authentic audience for your students!

"The mission of ePALS Classroom Exchange is to offer safe, innovative ways for learners to make contact with other cultures. They currently connect over 4.5 million users from 191 countries, speaking 136 languages, by providing built-in Webmail language translation and safety features such as monitored e-mail and profanity filters. All of the tools and resources on the site are free to anyone with a computer, anywhere in the world. The site also offers collaborative projects that students can join, as well as tools for creating projects and contacting students in remote locations."

ePals is the social network optimized for K-12 learning. Over half a million classrooms in 200 countries and territories have joined the ePals Global Community to connect, collaborate and exchange ideas. ePals now translates in 35 languages! The benefits of the site are that the students can connect with other students and classrooms around the globe. You connect with them by the projects that you are working on in the classroom. This gives the common ground to talk about back and forth. The possible pitfalls are if you get a classroom that is not as involved as yours. It could be a let down and you may have to find another classroom that you could connect with.

This site is free and connects you with other educators seeking to connect classrooms for global projects. It has great safety features and has a variety of projects for all content areas and grade levels. You can form e-mail pen pal connections with classrooms around the world. Very cool!

What an easy way for students to share documents and teachers to keep track of them. See the sections on "How to use folders as student turn-in folders" and "How to use forms to turn in assignments"

"Help your kids submit their idea and work to Quest to matter. This is a great way to showcase what your students are doing. It will also open up opportunities for mentoring. If you know a kid who is doing something cool to change the world - SUBMIT IT. The end date is June 7th. Why not have your class create a quest to matter. If you haven't had a chance to do a genius project or some creative teacherpreneurship with passion projects - USE THIS opportunity. My friend Angela Maiers had this idea and many have joined in (like me) to help create a website showcasing and promoting all the great work that students are doing as social entrepreneurs to change the world. There will be a winning project that is showcased and mentored. " Vicki Davis

Great opportunities here for authentic learning...

"Zeros are seldom an accurate description of a student's achievement and skew average grades dramatically. Instead of prompting greater effort, zeros and the low grades they yield more often cause students to withdraw from learning. One alternative to zeros is to assign an "I" or "Incomplete" grade with explicit requirements for completing the work." .... "If the grade is to represent how well students have learned, mastered established learning standars, or achieved specified learning goals, then the practice of assigning zeros clearly misses the mark." **"Teachers must consider what message they want to communicate through grading, who the primary audience for the message is, and what the intended goal of the communication is." ...

Square of Life: Studies in Local and Global Environments is an Internet-based collaborative project in which students will investigate their local environment and share that information with other students from around the country and the world. Participants will: Identify living and non-living things in their school yards. Revisit this site in mid-August for information about the Fall 2012 run of the project.

Colleen, I love this project. I would totally do this with my 4th grade students. :) It would be fun to post our findings on our blog and try and get others involved too.

This looks like neat project to do. I would be interested having a "Key Pal" through the project to really engage students and introduce them to who will be their audience.

Info about what's different with using a Chromebook vs other devices, and what teachers (and students) need to know to use them. Note: 9th-10th students will use Chromebooks as their 1-to-1 device; Title will get some carts at CCJH: and each elementary school will get 6 carts at each of their schools

global collab The Project Launched at the 2013 Global Education conference, "Out My Window" was born from a quest to have students gain global perspective. "Out My Window" classrooms share their world. Inspired by the five themes of geography, students reveal cultural awareness and understanding through original poetry and photography. The Process 1. Take a photo "out your window". 2. Write a poem incorporating the 5 themes of geography - place, location, human environment interaction, region, and movement. Look below for poetry and 5 themes resources 3. Edit your photo to your liking. Look below for editing tips. -We suggest overlaying the text onto the image like the example shown, but you can also add it separately if you'd like. 4. Share! Sharing 1. Create a Flickr account if you don't already have one. The Flickr #outmywindow group is public and by submitting you agree to the group norms 2. Once you have logged into Flickr and been added to the #outmywindow group, you can start uploading your finished product! 3. Be sure to use our Twitter hashtag - #omw1415 to continue sharing your work!

You sign up, ask your students to find some bugs, and mail them to us. We accept your application, schedule your session, and prepare the bugs for insertion into the electron microscope. When your session time arrives, we put the bug(s) into the microscope and set it up for your classroom. Then you and your students login over the web and control the microscope. We'll be there via chat to guide you and answer the kids' questions.

Global SchoolNet's mission is to support 21st century learning and improve academic performance through content driven collaboration. We engage teachers and K-12 students in meaningful project learning exchanges worldwide to develop science, math, literacy and communication skills, foster teamwork, civic responsibility and collaboration, encourage workforce preparedness and create multi-cultural understanding. We prepare youth for full participation as productive and effective citizens in an increasing global economy.

Global SchoolNet partners with schools, communities, and businesses to provide collaborative learning activities that prepare students for the workforce and help them become literate and responsible global citizens. The Project Registry has more than 800 online projects providing teachers a chance to collaborate and share learning experiences. The most recent partner programs include "Mosaics of Life" (a global art project culminating in the creation of eight collaborative glass tile murals made up of original art and expressing understanding, concerns, and insights in themes that affect and shape lives both locally and globally) and the U.S. State Department-sponsored "Doors to Diplomacy Competition" (an educational challenge for middle and high school students about the importance of international affairs and diplomacy, with prizes including scholarships, cash, and a trip to Washington, D.C.).

The goal of It's About Chime is to have the students explore the mathematics & physics behind sound waves and wind chimes. The students will engineer chime machines that ride the wind to produce melodic tunes for enjoyment. This project offers a great way to incorporate a real world audience into teaching the physics and math of sound waves. The pitfalls of this may be the materials and time required, but the project is well laid out and has a great deal of resources.

Project Densho The Densho Educational Web site gives students access to a wealth of primary source material relating to the incarceration of Japanese-Americans during World War II. Project Densho's partnership with historians at Stanford University produced curriculum to help students and teachers use these valuable resources in classroom activities. This is a powerful tool to bring inquiry-based learning into middle and high school social studies classrooms. This is a powerful site for inquiry-based learning for upper grades; however, there isn't anything already created that we can enroll our classes in... unless it's there and I'm missing it.

The Student Blogging Challenge for spring is starting in March. Here's wehre you can register your class. Note, ECE is preschool-1st grade; LP is lower primary which we call Primary; UP is upper primary which we call Elementary. =) Their Aussie terms are a little different than ours. For more info on the challenge, visit http://studentchallenge.edublogs.org/

The Mystery Class investigation is an eleven week hunt in which students try to find ten secret "Mystery Classes" hiding around the globe. The changing amount of sunlight at each site is the central clue.

I think that this could potentially be a great anchor activity for students.

I've seen it done with 5th grade years ago and it was great! Mrs. Hamman's class did it this year also. See her post http://blogs.goaj.org/mrshamman/2013/04/11/journey-north-mystery-class/

This is worth your taking the time to look at.

This site brings local, global, and regional business together for students to collaborate with.

This is a good site for older kids. It could provide them with an overview of what it is they will be learning and how they can interact with the teacher and other students.