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Julie and I spent some time with Silvia Tolisano talking about global collaboration, telling the story of how the flat classroom started and why we kept it going and the reason for the book. Also we snuck into the things shared in the book that we hope will help those involved in global education make it scalable and consistent. Probably the most fun was our discussion near the end about how Silvia and I "met" online and how we covered ISTE2006 from afar on our computers (pre twitter.) it was a fun talk.

I have to admit that I've become a huge Acrobat Pro fan. We use it in my classroom to print, annotate, and do all kinds of things. I look forward to learning about how to use this program to convert everything into year end portfolio dvds with movies, text, etc. 

As I was researching for the hashtag for ending slavery, I came across hashonomy. See how this site works. I found the searching clunky sometimes but it was useful.

Fascinating look at how your life style, living conditions, and luxuries affects how much or how little you support the slave trade around the world. Items of clothing and geared towards children seem to have a deep connection with slave labor in developing nations. Great simulation for college students, or high school students that can deal with being asked a "trick" question about prostitution at the end.

If you want to see exactly how a LiveScribe pen works, this is an excellent tutorial video. It isn't super fast but it shows you how it really works from beginning to end. This demo is how to create a pencast. Although some of you may be doing this on your ipad using some of the new apps, the Livescribe pen is a sub $100 pen that is very powerful. If you prefer to take notes you can record everything on the pen. I've had one and really enjoy it.

University of the people, a site offering free degrees in business administration and computer science continues to gain momentum as leading the effort to "democratize education." Things are underfoot that will radically change the expensive landscape known as higher Ed. The bottom line is that universities without solid online platforms won't be ready for the changes they will need to made. Their greatest commodity will be excellent teachers who can now be beamed from one end of the planet to the other. This crazy upheaval in education is only beginning and the competition is no longer limited by geography.

Great article by Seth Godin. We need to apply this to education. If people remember the last thing - are we giving them a great final experience in high school. Most likely -- no. "[One really important amplification: Research shows us that what people remember is far more important than what they experience. What's remembered: --the peak of the experience (bad or good) and, --the last part of the experience. The easiest way to amplify customer satisfaction, then, is to underpromise, then increase the positive peak and make sure it happens near the end of the experience you provide. Easy to say, but rarely done.]"  - Seth Godin

TESiboard resources are primarily open-ended tools that enable teachers to enagage their pupils in a learning dialogue around the resource. The resources are designed for use by the teacher on their interactive whiteboard but many are also suitable for pupil use, usually responding to a task or challenge set by the teacher.

We have talked before about the study benefits of re-writing notes - you READ them more carefully and you SEE them again as you write them, (AND you end up with more readable, neat notes in the proper format!) Additional benefits of typing (digitizing) the notes: Ability to add screenshots to embellish the material Ability to use formatting to embellish the material

Kaplan has released a free SAT turbo test. In 90 minutes, they say that you'll know approximately what your score will be on the SAT. This could be something you could do with students. They've made it so you can use your web browser and take this on the ipad. I'd like to see the output that comes at the end of it.

There is a move to have blind evaluation of student arts portfolios in Tennessee as a means of evaluating teachers. Arne Duncan endorsed the view of using this method of teacher evaluation. As a computer science teacher, I'd love this view and in fact, my school does evaluate me by the results of my students. While not all students have perfect work, you can see the rigor in what my classroom is doing with the efolios they build at the end of the year.

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.

There are some back end things you should do with your authorship and Google Plus if you're a blogger. The best description/ tools is on this page - http://yoast.com/wordpress-rel-author-rel-me/ -- if you've got a snowday it might be a good day to get this straight. It is a tad of a pain but if you're blogging you should make sure it is handled.

"While I did enjoy David Burgess' Teach Like a Pirate, and the hangout that she shared with us, I'll admit… it made me kind of sad.  Not because of the content itself!  But because of the hard memories it brought up.  I used to teach creatively and encourage innovation in my classroom like that.  When I graduated college, I was chock full of ideas and adored hands-on learning.  But my communication skills was parents was very weak and my administrator was a frustrated man who decided his best way of control was micromanaging.  It's a bit of a long story, but the end result is I was knocked down to stop being creative; to just follow the curriculum and to push worksheets. " Wow. As I read this teacher from Dr. Lee Graham's class (they are in gamifi-ed with my students) I'm so touched by how the teacher helps us feel what is happening to TOO MANY TEACHERS. Too many teachers are being pushed down to teach the wrong way. Worksheet wonders and we wonder why no one loves to learn. This is sad and must change. I hope you'll comment.

If you're not already using Dropbox - you should. They had a developer conference and will likely end up everywhere in every app. Some very cool things coming. Just like Evernote - who has a powerful "trunk" features where developer work is showcased - Dropbox is going to find that opening up to development opens a whole new marketplace and ingenuity beyond what they have in house.  Some info from the wired article.  "But after all that single-mindedness, Houston and Ferdowsi now want to let their baby sing. Today, at Dropbox's first-ever developers conference, the company is officially launching a new set of coding tools designed to push Dropbox into every corner of your digital life. Not content to stay sequestered inside the box, the company's co-founders are unveiling ways for developers to meld their service with every app on every device you own. For the first five or so years of its existence, Dropbox was synonymous with its "magic folder." Save your files in the Dropbox folder on your computer, and they "magically" reappear in your Dropbox apps on your phone and tablet and in your Dropbox account on the web. Now, if developers take to the company's new tools, the service will escape the confines of this folder, fusing with third-party apps running on practically every computer and smartphone operating system. Houston wants Dropbox to become the "spiritual successor to the hard drive." He says the hard drive needs to be replaced because so many of us are doing so much computing on devices that don't fit the traditional paradigm for working with files. Users don't interact with files on iOS, Android, or the web the way they do on PCs. Apps don't have "open" or "save" options that launch a separate window where you tap through a folder tree."

Tinkering works. Read Sylvia Martinez and Gary Stager's book "Invent to Learn" which talks about tinkering and how to use Maker Spaces to promote it to learn more. Great points from Lifehacker: "Research in the science of learning shows that hands-on building projects help young people conceptualize ideas and understand issues in greater depth. In an experiment described in the International Journal of Engineering Education in 2009, for example, one group of eighth-graders was taught about water resources in the traditional way: classroom lectures, handouts and worksheets. Meanwhile, a group of their classmates explored the same subject by designing and constructing a water purification device. The students in the second group learned the material better: they knew more about the importance of clean drinking water and how it is produced, and they engaged in deeper and more complex thinking in response to open-ended questions on water resources and water quality... it involves a loose process of trying things out, seeing what happens, reflecting and evaluating, and trying again."

This looks like a great contest. (Plus you can win the kind of computer I have on my desk and it is awesome.) Here's information from the sponsor of this essay contest. I also suggest you get photos and take videos and you can share on your own school website or blog. "The Legacy Project's 14th annual essay contest changes lives and communities as it connects generations and gives students a powerful purpose for writing - listening to and learning from a life . Students learn about real life from real people, and often end up making unexpected friendships along the way. Here's one amazing example of a past winning essay: http://www.legacyproject.org/contests/winners12.html#tulsa Here's a closer look at the educational value of the contest and 21st Century learning skills, with quotes from students and teachers across the country: http://www.legacyproject.org/contests/ltalhowenter.html To enter the Listen to a Life Contest, students 8-18 years interview a grandparent or grandfriend 50 years or older about the older person's hopes and goals through their life, how they achieved their goals and overcame obstacles, or key life experiences. The young person then writes a 300-word essay based on the interview. The Grand Prize is a Lenovo ThinkCentre computer, along with 10 Legacy Awards of a keepsake timepiece from Expressions of Time. The contest runs to March 28, 2014. Students and teachers can find out more about the Listen to a Life Essay Contest, including complete contest rules, at www.legacyproject.org. This national contest is run by the Legacy Project, a big-picture learning project, and the nonprofit Generations United in Washington, DC.

This telling story of a Dad and his son after the Arapahoe Shooting in text messages. I was crying before I got to the end. Those who respond to emergencies at school should read this to know how parents (and kids) feel although most of us could imagine. Heartfelt prayers continue to go out to everyone at Arapahoe including the friend of many of us Karl Fisch.