Group items tagged

Civil War Augmented Reality project -- just in my inbox. You civil war buffs and history teachers may really get a "kick" out of this. Speaking of "kick" they are trying to get a grant that requires people to vote for them. Take a look: "This message is from a group of educators in Pennsylvania who have developed a Social Studies project that is in the process of raising a modest amount of money to build prototypes for gathering additional partners. Our project, the Civil War Augmented Reality Project, is intended to enhance the experiences of students visiting Civil War sites. It is also intended to increase attendance and revenue for historic sites by offering both "high" and "low" tech experiences to best reach the majority of the population. We feel that our project is fulfilling a need that educators, park workers, technology enthusiasts, and Civil War enthusiasts have discussed in the past: How can historic sites both raise educational value and public interest in their institutions though technology, while not alienating the non-technical history fans? We have worked hard on the answer, and are interested in promoting our creative solutions. We would like to make clear that the project is not intended solely for Pennsylvania. It is our hope that the project will expand to other venues, as we feel that we have the ability to use our ideas to enhance the experiences of all students at historic sites."

You could perhaps use this to discuss college opportunities with students. This is an interesting take on the NBC show "Community" and relating it to what it is like to go to college.

Collaboration between teachers after discussion at ISTE. I'll use this as a jumping off point at a "Teaching Beyond the Classroom Walls" workship I'm giving.

I overheard a great conversation yesterday. Two girls were chatting behind me in the queue in the Post Office. From their discussion about school options and examinations, I'd say they were around 14 and 15 years old. Here's part of the conversation, it really made me smile. Girl #1: My mum doesn't even know I'm on Facebook. Girl #2: Oh gosh, you're on Facebook too? So am I. My parents don't know either; my mum doesn't like the idea of me being on it.

Really great performance - and follow-up discussion. Get Bob to visit if you can!

list of good online resources where students can practice what we're learning in the classroom about adjectives. They're simple - no discussion of adverbs, nothing about adjective order, etc. These sites are useful in helping English Language Learners just gain a basic sense of what an adjective is and how it's used.

So we decided to add a backchannel to the reading. While one of us reads, the kids in both classrooms and the other teacher chat in a today's meet room, discussing the text, asking questions, making predictions and dropping in great pieces of the text as it is read aloud over skype.

"Within the decade, it will either become the norm to teach this course (high school Algebra I) in middle school or we'll have finally woken up to the fact that there's no reason to give algebra weight over statistics and IT in high school for non-math majors (and they will have all taken it in middle school anyway)." - Shelley Blake-Plock

RT @ransomtech: A good discussion starter: "21 Things That Will Become Obsolete in Education by 2020" http://bit.ly/dTqAxj

Kelly Tenkley blog post after #edchat discussion 12/14/10 regarding "digital native" as a myth.

Great reflection of a student on education!

This student has done a marvelous speech on Education and giving choices to student. My favorite quote from Andrew ( a student from New Zealand) -- "A closed book test is simply not a realistic situation in the modern world." I'm not putting this on my blog as an embedded video because I would love for you to respond on NetGen where all educators are welcome to join in with students to discuss how education should evolve. This is an excellent video, and as you can see with my comments, there are a few points I take up with Andrew -- it is one of those -- you've gotta listen to this student kinda videos. He makes some great points speaking out for his generation. He says that when he asks his parents to help him and they say "I don't know how to do this" it tells him that it is not something that will be used and thus is unimportant! Hmmm.

You're invited to join our cultural scavenger hunt!

Join in our virtual scavenger hunt - this is a quick simple way in 3 days that you can meet students from other cultures and "flatten" your classroom by participating in the flat classroom conference. Start the conversations that need to happen. We're kicking this off now, although once it starts, it can really continue for some time. Maybe some of you will bring your students in to participate virtually. If you do this, please give a shout out by replying to the discussion. Join in if you wish! Just another way to flatten your classroom and there are a growing many!

On February 24, Common Core held a panel discussion to critique the idea of 21st century skills. Discussants included: Diane Ravitch, E.D. Hirsch Jr., Daniel Willingham, and Ken Kay. Remarks from panelists can found be here. We knew that this topic is a contentious one that would peak lots of interest.  It did: with more than 100 people in attendance, there was not an empty spot in the room (many attendees event found a semi-comfortable spot on the floor). Ravitch, Hirsch, and Willingham challenged Kay on the idea that learning skills is more important than understanding the content to which one applies skills.

reen Scene: "Learning About Acid Rain", a teachers guide for grades 6-8: Brian McLean from EPA's Office of Atmospheric Programs discusses the "Learning About Acid Rain", a teachers guide for grades 6-8 from the Koshland Science Museum and oversees and experiment conducted by students from KIPP KEY Academy in Washington DC.

great discussion on exactly what literacy is these days!

It took tens of thousands of years for writing to emerge after speech, thousands more before the printing press was invented, and a few hundred more for the telegraph to arrive. Today, new ways of relating are constantly created and a new communication medium emerges every time someone creates a web application-a Flickr here, a Twitter there. How can we use new media to foster the kinds of communication and community we desire in education? This presentation will discuss both successful and unsuccessful attempts to integrate emerging technologies into the classroom to create a rich virtual learning environment.

Discussion of business research, why it's not so great and how it could be improved

Names are popping up for education secretary amidst much discussion. Here is a recent one that I've seen named several times -- Joel Klein, chancellor of NYC public school system.

Interesting map showing live piracy incidents in 2008.

Google map showing all live piracy incidents in the world - this would fascinating to discuss this in a current events class and correlate the incidents of piracy with political regimes and other correlated items. Present to the class- here is the map -- figure out why this may be happening in these places.

A discussion of, and model for how interactive your classes are - with a bias towards technology but the feet firmly in teaching in general.

This is precisely why more of us should be implementing the "23 things" pd program with our teachers. Estie Cuellar from Houston Texas did an amazing job discussing her learning journey and did an amazing job blogging it as well. This is very impressive and displays the transformational nature of becoming immersed in these tools. I look forward to seeing what happens in her classroom! Again, I believe that embedded PD (professional development that is in pieces as part of our day) rather than binge PD is much more transformational! This is proof!

summary of Estie Cullear's learning from the 23 things project -- an excellent professional development method for EMBEDDING PD.