Group items tagged

Nice start for rubrics for 2.0 projects

Educational Origami is a blog, and a wiki, about the integration of ICT into the classroom, this is one of the largest challenges that I feel we as teachers face. Its about 21st Century Learning and 21st Century Teaching. Marc Prensky coined the now popular and famous phrase "Digital natives and digital immigrants" in his two papers on digital Children. We the teachers are the immigrants and our students are the natives, brought up in a world where there has always been computers and the internet, where information is always instant and varied. Our teaching and their learning must reflect this.

Educational Origami is a blog , and a wiki, about 21st Century Learning and 21st Century Teaching.

Article about how people look at web pages.

As you design web pages for use with your students -- do you wonder why they don't sometimes SEE what you're putting in front of them -- it is because of eye movement. It is design!!! This paper writes about the effect of website design on eye movement. Those who are desigining online curriculum need to understand this. My sister, Sarah, has been an onlien professor for Savannah College of Art and Design for a while, ,and this is something she talks about in her courses and shares with me. This is why I emphasize wiki layout and design w/ my students (like having a table of contents and white space.) If it is not attractive, it just doesn't exist, because it IS NOT READ! Educators will do well to remember that!

Nice Blog Post from Edwin Wargo about vision and leadership. I particularly like this phrase about school culture: "No matter how cool the technology tools, culture, I believe, will win the tug-of-war. There still may be a few trailblazers but systemic buy-in is likely to be minimal. I believe culture ensures the sustainability that Michael Fullan talks about."

Nice post about leadership

To me it really brought home how artificial speeches about canned subjects in front of a class are little to no preparation about talking to people naturally in a real-world setting. It's like the students are only good at "pretend speaking"

Just went thru public speaking in our school... this rings painfully true!

Leigh Newton director of IT at a school in Baku, Azerbaijan wants to talk about linking his grade 5 classes of about 30 students to others in the world. There is also a PYP (Primary years program) on the flat classroom ning about this. Some interesting conversations are emerging. If you're interested, join and join the conversation.

A teacher who wants to talk about elementary level projects with a classroom with Ajerbaijan.

This is a very honest, open discussion between educators about why diigo or delicious -- I think the fact we can have this conversation within diigo at all says a lot for the usefulness of the tool. Diigo is an emerging tool for social bookmarking and collective intelligence.

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What happens if you really begin to rethink what your school looks like? No, I'm not talking about rethink from a wildly radical viewpoint - like mine or say, Neil Postman's - but just if a dedicated set of educators stops "tinkering" with little changes and wonders what school might be like...

I love these thoughts about being a thought leader. I think also, this could be said of leaders in schools as well. "It's important that if you want to be a Thought Leader in your industry, you take the time to develop your thoughts and publish information that will educate, entertain and engage your readers. Think about the issues you've worked through yourself in the past with your business and talk about those. Share your challenges and how you struggled to get through them, but what you did eventually to achieve success. Or, sometimes even more enlightening, share your failures, and how you're working never to experience that particular failure again. An old Afghan proverb I heard on the radio last week said, "If you think you're leading, and no one's following, you're just going for a walk.""

Instagram is something kids are using. Here are some tips for helping your child be safe on instagram. I totally agree about talking to your child about the photo map. If you haven't already, talk to them today about NOT using the feature which puts their photos on a map of where they were when they took it. Like that paint in your new bedroom? Photo map it? Boom. The lat and long of your daughter's bedroom. Just a bad idea. I do think instagram and other location based websites are going to get into hot water. Lat and long disclosing by kids should be approved by parents.

Jamie Kelly does a nice job of dissecting much of what is wrong with technology journalism - going for the trending topic instead of saying "this topic is trending because of misinformation" (i.e. Instagram terms of service changes). I think these points are excellent and can also apply to much of what happens in the education circles as well -- if everybody is talking about ___, then everyone is searching about ____, then everyone is writing about ____ so they will be found. Sometimes it is good not to be everybody but to be somebody who is different and more importantly, who goes through the hype to be as accurate as possible.

I'm interviewing Gallit Zvi from British Columbia, Canada today on Every Classroom matters (should post in about a week) about genius hour and I was intrigued by this post on her blog about how her school "looks." While some of these points have inspired questions (they can cook for their family in lieu of copying spelling sentences, for example) others have me wishing we could do the same thing (entrepreneur fair where students have a sales idea, craft a business plan and make and sell products.) It is worth a peek inside this fascinating classroom and school which uses genius hour among other things.

Do you want to know what a student thinks about genius learning? Read Melina's thoughts about this practice in 12th grad english. ""What are the projects on?"-you might ask. The topic and the project is completely up to us to decide. If we are interested in how to make a good documentary or how to play an instrument, teaching ourselves and researching that topic can be our project. This new way of learning is very peculiar to me, but also very intriguing. For so long I have been told what to know and taught how to know it, but never once did I really felt in control of my learning. It felt like the knowledge went into my brain, stayed their until after my exams, and then was thrown away like a smooth stone into a lake, out of my reach forever. But when you are passionate about something and can lear"

Jure Klepic nails it in his critique of the Forbes 2013 list of Social Media influencers. If you're clueless about social media, don't make a list. Jure says "It seems that today everyone thinks they can write and preach about influence, even though they have no clue as to what influence is. In order to rank people on the ability to influence we need to understand influence, not just define it. When people just try to define influence they come away with something as useless as what is used in this post. The real definition of influence is quite simple -- influence is the power to sway. But understanding influence is far more than just knowing this definition. Understanding influence in contemporary online world means understanding contemporary notions of identity and identity construction. Identity, ideas of person and self are cultural constructs; they are ideas and values that are part of our culture. So the real question here should not be who will make the next Forbes list, but how can the author of an article about influence omit the names of so many of the brightest and best thought leaders in the field? "

Review and consider your classroom rules. My best advice is to keep them simple and few and if you want to go into detail, let the students collaboratively write out the details in a google doc or using post it notes as you talk about what kids should and shouldn't do in the classroom. It is great to talk about these things up front because you will understand the "pet peeves" that drive kids crazy about each other (saving yourself time.) I find that spelling out my bare minimum and involving kids in the detaiils gives them ownership.

This is a lesson plan that you can use as a starting point if you choose to involve your classrooms in the movement to end slavery in the world. Could you imagine if we could leave a legacy of this one thing. Our job is to speak for the helpless and to encourage empathy and understanding for others in this generation of children. It isn't all about what you can get, but about what you can give. This booklet is out of the UK. "The antislavery movement was the first major campaign in Britain to involve ordinary citizens across all classes (as well as the slaves themselves) in the struggle to end the practice. As such it is a good example of how change can come about when people work together for a just cause. This booklet More…intends inspire and equip young people to take a stand against the continuation of slavery and injustice in the world today."

So often when we talk about schools, students, parents and teachers, we discuss things in arm-lengths type of way. We discuss how they need to have richer and more meaningful learning experiences, how we need to provide them with the opportunities to use the technological tools in authentic learning experiences. What we don't discuss is how schools need to be places of living not just of learning. They need to be places of community where children can experience life-lessons not just academic lessons. The story that follows is about one such event that took place at our school this past year.

This survey is designed to educate and activate you. With the size of my house and the fact I have a lot of electronics 83 slaves"work" for me with the primary impact in Asia. This is not about guilt but facts about our world today. What can I do? We shoud advocate that businesses look ino their supply chain to determine f the good are made by people who are free or if they are, in fact, slaves. Create awareness. Let businesses know there is surging interest in abolishing slavery. Don't complain about slavery in America over 100 years a go when ou are willing to do nothing now. Provocative test.

I love how Nathan Gray (@maccprincipal on Twitter) shares small, short snippets of what he is thinking and what he wants for his school. Whatever your thoughts are about what he shares here, this is a great example for principals to see. This principal shares about once every two months a small paragraph or two about what he is thinking and what he wants for the school. It is enough that I could read it and get a feel for who he is as a person. If a parent needs to interview anyone for a school it is the principal. So much flows from the front office into the classroom. Great best practice.