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This is a call out specifically to my friends out there in the Atlanta area or anywhere in Georgia to put in for a poster session at Georgia Tech's conference about the Foundations for the future. I wish I could get away but am a bit tied up at school right now. Here's the information and link: "Foundations for the Future (F3), a K-12 outreach and research program at Georgia Tech Research Institute, knows that Georgia teachers are using technology in amazing ways to inspire and engage students. One of the most frequent comments we hear is that it is difficult for educators to know what's working for other educators because there is so much going on, not everyone can afford to attend conferences, and access to technology is inconsistent across the state. We want to honor and highlight teachers and their projects. What better way to get inspired than through a fellow colleague! What better way to meet other passionate educators and share your experiences! F3 is hosting the 2013 F3 Educator Showcase during our May Explorers Guild meeting. The showcase will include a panel discussion along with a poster session. If you are interested in applying for the poster session, all you need to do is follow the guidelines below. Posters will be chosen by a selection committee of F3 partners and Georgia Tech colleagues. Chosen posters will be printed for participants so that after the event they can take the posters back to their school to continue highlighting the good work taking place there! This event helps support F3's mission to help acquire and leverage instructional technology resources for Georgia's classrooms, schools, and districts, share best practices, and establish a community of learners. We look forward to your submissions and can't wait to see you all at the event in May!   Guidelines for Poster Abstract Submission: Title: Accurately and concisely present your idea in 15 words or less Abstract: In 350 words or less, tell us about how using technology

"Engineering and Computing Career Conference (ECC) is a two day conference for high school girls to explore engineering majors offered at Georgia Tech. The 2008 ECC will be held on October 23 & 24 at Georgia Tech's Bill Moore Student Success Center." This is a great event to pass along to your female students who excel in math and science. To be held at my alma mater.

October 23, 24 math and science conference in Atlanta at GT.

Superintentendent of Quitman County Schools, Allen Fort, nails it with this article about being a superintendent of a rural school in Georgia. When budgets get cut by the state, rural schools hurt the most because their falling tax revenue means they get cut on both ends. Many rural schools are struggling and it is a shame what is happening in many of them. He talks about one of the biggest problems in rural schools which is a problem for all of us in an increasing way: "A rural school in way too many students' lives does play the role of in loco parentis. In these buildings, the teachers, janitors, secretaries, lunch room workers, paraprofessionals, and bus drivers help them gain knowledge and understanding of the value of an education, acquire social skills and aspire to succeed, and in many, many cases they do." You should take the time to read this past Sunday's AJC to get an understanding of the state of education in Georgia for indeed many other states have similar issues. I thought the whole piece done by the AJC had many different viewpoints - it was a great read.

In the state of Georgia they have the Georgia Download destination for checking out books. I've got this set up on my library account and can check out books to my kindle, ibooks to my ipad (or kindle app there) or audio books to my overdrive account. I LOVE IT. It is time for schools to have their students take their devices down to their libraries and learn how to check out books all over again.

Article about Georgia Dept of Ed rollout of common core standards and their self admitted botched rollout of state standards several years back. The worst issue from my discussions with Georgia Public school teachers was the attempt at Math I, II, III, an attempt to combine Algebra, Geometry, Trig and Statistics. Not only did the teachers complain but so did parents. I know of several math teachers who quit over this. This is what happens in experiments like this. Standards sound great but who writes them? What happens when they are cumbersome? Look at technology standards which many (including me) think are way too heavily influenced by industry.

Receiving a Georgia award for the NCWIT Aspirations in Computing changed my daughter's life. She could see herself in a STEM field and has applied to go to Georgia Tech and several other schools in Computer Science. If you have a girl in your school who has done some cool things with technology. APPLY!!! It is a great program. You can win $500 and a laptop if you receive a national award.

A well-written blog post on using the Web to create a biographical profile of Georgia O'Keeffe.

Mentoring is something that communities should have for their schools, businesses, and community. Here are 8 secrets of fostering mentoring that I wrote for Communities in Schools for Georgia that may prove helpful for some of you. You might want to share this before "national mentoring month" is over in the US.

College / high school is being done in Georgia with the ACCELL program. I think the biggest issue is that it is accelerating classes and perhaps might be ahead of high school, but I promise, it isn't college. I have some concerns but am glad that it is helping people get started towards college. I just think care must be taken to ensure the quality and calibre of teaching and content, particularly if transfer credits are being required in state.

Another Mooc, I got an email from Jeremy Short, the professor leading this course. I was a management major at Georgia tech, I love the incorporation of graphic novels into this course. Here's what Dr. Short sent me: "I'm a professor at the University of Oklahoma. My co-authors and I conducted a study that will soon be published in Business Communication Quarterly where we find that graphic novels are more effective than traditional textbooks for direct recall of material. The study used material about human motivation commonly taught in introductory management courses. In addition to the superior recall associated with the graphic novel version of the material, more than 80% of students indicated the graphic novel format compared favorably to traditional textbooks. Now anyone in the world can conduct their own study to see if their experiences match our findings, as I will be teaching a class beginning June 10 and ending July 15, that is free under the MOOC format and will feature a graphic novel textbook as well as a traditional principles of management text - both books I've co-authored. OU students can enroll through regular registration and take the course for credit, but anyone interested in the class can enroll for free under the non-credit option. The only cost of the class under the second option is the cost of the two texts, which can be purchased for under $100 total."

I'm recording another episode of "Every Classroom matters" interviewing some of the teachers and organizers in the Chicago Early STEM college movement. As I researched for this show, I found this report out of North Carolina reporting an increase in test scores. A county here in Georgia is also implementing Early college stem as well. STEM is something every school needs (listen to the earlier show I recorded w/ Kevin Jarrett) but this is an interesting approach. "Just two years after it opened, a North Carolina high school has found that teaching students the principles of STEM can boost test scores and keep learners engaged. That's prompting the school to ask, "If we can do it, why can't other schools do it, too?" The school has a mouthful of a name: the Wake NC State University STEM Early College High School. It has attracted many students to its Raleigh campus - first generation-college students, minorities, and students from poor backgrounds - who are underrepresented in STEM fields. But in 2012, students did far better than average on the state's standardized exams, with more than 95 percent passing."

Sad to see that the first major fail of a MOOC would happen at my alma mater, Georgia Tech, but I do applaud their transparency and moving forward with it. I hope they do it soon. With 41,000 students in the #foemooc - they had 40,000 students in a google doc which has a limit of 50 simultaneous editors - and with no backup - they weren't ready for the problems that would happen. This was a Coursera course and it just couldn't handle the load. Interestingly this was a Fundamentals of Online Education MOOC which makes it even more ironic. Read this article for more about what happened. "Maybe it was inevitable that one of the new massive open online courses would crash. After all, MOOCs are being launched with considerable speed, not to mention hype. But MOOC advocates might have preferred the collapse of a course other than the one that was suspended this weekend, one week into instruction: "Fundamentals of Online Education: Planning and Application.""

FAscinating tool that lets you upload data and make predictions. This would have been a lifesaver in 1990 when I took "Artificial Intellegence Applications in Market Research" at Georgia Tech. IF you are working with predictive modeling at the college level, you should look at the powerful feature set available here.

This is an example of a consent form for research for a research student done at the University of Georgia. If you are a researcher, you'll want to check with your university as to the proper way to format and secure permissions, however, as students become researchers, I have questions about securing permission for research. This is an area we need to discuss and understand because students can now be viable, authentic researchers and perhaps may have links to more accurate data collection techniques than researchers. What happens when researchers partner with students to collect data? A whole new world of research is opening up, so research forms are worth collecting.

John Seely Brown's PDF on the new learning environments for the 21st century based upon a 2005 presentation he did at the Forum of Higher Education's 2005 Aspen symposium. This is an important read. (of course many of you have already read it.) If you wonder why I'm digging into the research, it is as I work on my second book on collaborative writing. It is amazing to me that I can find so many more things online than I ever could in the Georgia Tech library when I was a research assistant for the then president of the national Economics Association, Dr. Danny Boston. I may not be in an institution of higher learning but I can institute higher learning in my daily practice. I want everything I write for publication to be well grounded. I hope that is why those of you who gift me with your presence on this blog will feel free to let me know in the comments if you have concerns or pointers to other work.

There are schools in Georgia with reading dogs. Yes, reading dogs. These animals stay in the library and kids get to. There and read to the animals. My friend Stephen Rahn shared a pic on Facebook about two he saw yesterday and sas the kids love them. They sit on the floor and read to the dogs as their tails wag and the kids love it. I think this is an amazing idea but ain one about how libraries are bing reinvented. heartwarming!

As a mother of a daughter who is applying to Georgia Tech in Computer Science, this is important. My daughter's life was changed when I had her use Kodu in class, write a program and win an NCWIT award. She was on a panel with Sylvia Martinez at ISTE about encouraging more girls into STEM and really realized that she liked Computer Science and would at least try it as a major. She said until she saw people talk about it and realized she could code, she had no idea that it was something she could do and like. Girls who code is a group that works to encourage girls to enter computing fields.

Hi Vicki. It's been my experience that students (boys and girls) who are exposed to programming in elementary school and then have it as part of the school IT curriculum are far more likely to stay the course through to high school and beyond. Some of my best programmers at Middle School have been Gr. 6 girls, a few of whom continued on to complete AP level programming, undergrad and graduate work in Comp Sci. Papert's work with LOGO pointed the way, ALICE and Scratch are there to play. Just need to keep programming in the curriculum so that students (boys and girls) know that it's a valued academic skill and not just a preserve for hobbiests and tinkerers.

Information to help Georgia USA teachers teach economics.

Website to promote community service - curriculum and awards program.

This seems to be a great organization with curriculum, information and a structure to plan community service projects within your class. Students can earn points and an awards program exists as well. I've gotten permission for our Special Olympics Bocce Ball event to be an ad hoc event to support this cause. We have over 50 students who serve as officials for Special Olympics Bocce Ball players - it has become a very large Special Olympics Event in the State of Georgia. Join in!

Cool webinars and expert activities. I just love these -- go to this website and sign up! Dr. Wayne Clough, former president of Georgia Tech (my alma mater) now runs the smithsonian and they are doing some of the coolest things! Here is a list, but go to the website to join in. " Day One: Understanding the American Experience Tuesday, 13 April 2010 11:00 to 11:50 am EDT How do we change a stereotype? 12:00 to 12:50 pm EDT What can science tell us about American history? 2:00 to 2:50 pm EDT What does clothing communicate? Day Two: Valuing World Cultures Wednesday, 14 April 2010 11:00 to 11:50 am EDT Who owns music? 12:00 to 12:50 pm EDT What happens when a people meets its past? 2:00 to 2:50 pm EDT How does design solve everyday problems? Day Three: Unlocking the Mysteries of the Universe Wednesday, 28 April 2010 11:00 to 11:50 am EDT Are there other worlds out there? 12:00 to 12:50 pm EDT How have we imagined other worlds? 2:00 to 2:50 pm EDT How do we grasp the vastness of the universe? Day Four: Understanding and Sustaining a Biodiverse Planet Thursday, 29 April 2010 11:00 to 11:50 am EDT What do modern animal bones tell us about biodiversity? 12:00 to 12:50 pm EDT How can we learn about nature's most elusive animals? 2:00 to 2:50 pm EDT How (and why) do we count living things?"