Group items tagged

Thinklink has made some upgrades for teachers. There is an improved student sign up, the ability to organize students by class. You can create image "channels" and interactive albums and you can have a more safe way to find images and use them. I recorded a session on my podcast this week about UDL and Beth Ritter-Guth highly recommends Thinglink to use with students.

It is finally here. Here are the details on our Flat Classroom global book club. (click the link for more) Every week for 10 weeks we will meet at an alternating time - 12 hours apart. (For the East Coast USA it is Sundays at 6 pm Eastern or Monday mornings at 6 am eastern)  Visit our Book club calendar to convert these times to your Time Zone. Subscribe to this calendar via Google calendar to keep up with events.This is Sunday evenings at 22:00GMT alternating with Monday mornings at 10:00GMT in our Blackboard Collaborate room https://sas.elluminate.com/m.jnlp?sid=2007066&password=M.065891D192F8072208BF5756999CE0 .   The book club is free and everyone is welcome. #flatclass Book Club Meeting Times Week and Date Time Topic of Conversation Week 1: Sunday March 11 22:00 GMT (6 pm EDT) Chapter 1 - Flattening Classrooms through Global Collaboration (p 1-17) Chapter 2 - Impact on Learning: Research in the Global Collaborative Classroom (p18-30) Week 2: Monday, March 19 10:00 GMT (6 am EDT) Chapter 3 - Step 1: Connection (p 31-61) Week 3: Sunday, March 25 22:00 GMT (6 pm EDT) Chapter 4 - Step 2: Communication (p 62-96) Week 4: Monday, April 2 10:00 GMT (6 am EDT) Chapter 5 - Step 3: Citizenship (p 97-125) Take a break. Week 5: Sunday, April 15 22:00 GMT (6 pm EDT) Chapter 6 - Step 4: Contribution and Collaboration (p 126-157) Week 6: Monday, April 23 10:00 GMT (6 am EDT) Chapter 7 - Step 5: Choice (p 158-196) Week 7: Sunday, April 29 22:00 GMT (6 pm EDT) Chapter 8 - Step 6: Creation (p197-214) Week 8: Monday, May 7 10:00 GMT (6 am EDT) Chapter 9 - Step 7: Celebration (p 215-234) Week 9: Sunday, May 13 22:00 GMT (6 pm EDT) Chapter 10 - Designing and Managing a Global Collaborative Project (p 235-267) Week 10: Monday, May 21 10:00 GMT (6 am EDT) Chapter 11 - Challenge-Based Professional Development (p 268-293) Chapter 12: Rock the World (p 293 - 304)  We're also inviting the educators featured in each chapter to be with us for the conversations about "th

I'm embarrassed to admit, but two weeks ago I didn't even know anything about  Angry Birds. It looks like this addicting little game has been around for a while. I know … Where have I been? I guess I've been spending time with a less angry little bird … I'm really not the angry type! I guess I see Twitter as better use of my time and professional collaborative learning than shooting birds out of a slingshot. A casual conversations with my hairdresser a few weeks ago about the game led to a quick demonstration on her phone. Another reference came last Friday while attending a session on Instructional Coaching for principals. Some areas that Instructional Coaches can assist schools with are referred to as the Big Four: Classroom Management, Content, Instruction, and Formative Assessment. While the presenters facilitated dialogue around the topic of formative assessment the analogy was made to video gaming; and specifically Angry Birds. This piqued my curiosity.

This is a superb random word generator split into nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs. Great for infusing a little magic into creative writing sessions. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/English

Global Education Conference Schedule. It starts in just a few hours. If you are doing work in global education, this is your week!

#ukedchat summary and archive discussing the possibilities of a longer school day

Pakistan is pushing to educate more of its children, amidst financial woes and a struggle for more funding. Their goal: 100% enrollment. Of course, there is a great effort also to build a firewall in Pakistan much like the "great firewall of China." That said, there are many lovely educators from Pakistan who contribute and connect increasingly online and I wish this country well as well as the many countries working to increase enrollment. "As schools returned to session in Pakistan's northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province this fall, the newly elected provincial government - with the help of the non-profit campaign Alif Ailaan - launched an enrollment drive. In its first month, the drive managed to enroll nearly 245,000 out of school children - about 65% male and 35% female - across 25 districts of the province, according to figures provided by Alif Ailaan. But considering Pakistan's education woes, where more than 25 million children between the ages of 5-16 remain out of school, it is a small step. "In order to provide schooling to all the kids, we need about Rs. 138 billion (roughly $1.2 billion) just in KP - for school infrastructure, classrooms, teachers so on and so forth," Joudat Ayaz, the province's education secretary, told me over dinner. Ayaz estimates the number of out of school children in KP between 2 to 3 million, about 20% to 30% of the school-age children in the province. "You can't do this [reaching 100% enrollment] in one go - you have to do it progressively, over six or seven years.""

I was recording a session with Sue Waters tonight about the Edublog Awards and she mentioned this post from Joyce Seitzinger about why the edublog awards matter and I wanted to share it. While many pundits and critics arise and say negative things any time an awards program happens, I think that the Edublog Awards matters because it helps find new voices. Voting will open soon but realize that if anyone nominates you -- it is an honor. Take the time to go through the finalists, add them to your RSS reader and your Twitter account. Take a read at this great post to know why the edublog awards do matter... thank you Joyce for a lovely, compelling post (and some great nominations.)

Yes Kathy Cassidy rocks - she recently did a session on Eduslam - Great work. If you want to know what she's doing with her first grade students and digital portolios, you can take a listen to this quick 7 minute video.

Teachers sharing ideas, resources and activities for teaching ICT

Through the end of the year, Discovery just sent me a note that they are offering these three common core academies at no cost. Here's the info from Steve Dembo. I've done some work with their SIEMENS STEM Academy and am a sTAR Educator and everything they do is top notch. If you can work it out before the end of the year, this is something you'll want to do. From Steve Dembo: "We know that implementing the Common Core can be an uphill climb. That's why Discovery Education is proud to partner with educators to offer Common Core Academies in ELA, Math, and Leadership at no cost. From now until the end of the school year, educators across America are invited to sign up for an Academy and receive: practical strategies to implement CCSS reseach-based instructional practices best practices in using digital content resources and digital tools for immediate classroom integration Discovery Education Common Core Academies offer one day of immersive professional development and two follow-up virtual sessions at no cost to support educators and leaders in effectively implementing the Common Core State Standards. Educators may choose from three Academies offering a unique combination that brings together best practices in digital integration with proven research-based instructional practices: Literacy and the Common Core in a Digital World Teaching and Assessing Common Core Math in a Digital World Leadership Strategies to Support Digital Literacy and the Common Core"

Southern Worlds 2010 is a collaborative project organised by the University of Tasmania, the Tasmanian Polytechnic, The Hutchins School and the Tasmanian Department of Education. The conference seeks to connect primary, secondary and tertiary educators, students, managers and developers to share, learn and explore the potential of virtual worlds to improve educational outcomes for individuals and institutions. The event is scheduled for Monday the 25th of October to Thursday the 28th of October and includes virtual sessions as well as a full day get together in Hobart on Wednesday the 27th.

Cool Webinar tomorrow - Live Webinar with the Folger Shakespeare Library on Wednesday, March 18 from 8:00 - 9:30 p.m. Eastern Time (5:00pm start Pacific Time, 12 midnight GMT). Our speakers will present and demonstrate methods for teaching Shakespeare using digital media. The educational activities to be presented were developed by trained workshop leaders and teachers during the Folger's Teaching Shakespeare Institutes and sessions. Participants will learn practical and exciting ways they can incorporate Shakespeare's King Lear and other literary works into history, social studies, English, and language arts instruction. I try to understand why we cannot use these as credits - they are free and they are announced a few days a head of time -- but still, they are valuable learning experiences.

Tools for blind to move into Second Life

This is a write up from Jacek Antonelli, an artist and Scripter in Second Life, who attended Louise Later's session in Second Life on accesibilities in Second Life. They reviewed two scripts that will help people with limited or no vision enjoy second life without visual feedback! This is so exciting! They need volunteers to help them develop the scripts - everyone working on this project is either blind or has a disability. Now, this is something to get behind. Great job Jacek!

Great presentation from Steve!

EduCon 2.1 is both a conversation and a conference. And it is not a technology conference. It is an education conference. It is, hopefully, an innovation conference where we can come together, both in person and virtually, to discuss the future of schools. Every session will be an opportunity to discuss and debate ideas -- from the very practical to the big dreams.

Notes on the wiki presentation that I did with Adam Frey -- I'm saving all of these and also want to link to those who took the time to link and write about the sessions that I was a part of. Thank you for such a great outline!

Notes on the wiki workshop w/ Vicki Davis and Adam Frey

This session happened on Capitol Hill last Monday 06-23-08--bringing broadband to every American.

Web 2.0 smackdown notes from joyce valenza - she did a great transcription of notes from this session. I love the photo of the web 2 keychain!

A transcription of the web 2.0 smackdown from edubloggercon.