Group items matching

in title, tags, annotations or url

A popular website for uploading your best photos and selling them is 500px. You can upload 20 pictures for free a week and have your personal store selling your photos. This is a money maker for those students who are photography buffs.

Pernille Ripp's poignant post shares why more teachers don't refuse to give the tests. Unless it is done en masse, it can't really be done. That said, parents can refuse to have their children take the test without repercussions and in fact, a national opt out movement is brewing. "If I were to refuse administering these state mandated tests, I would get in trouble.  That is an absolute guarantee.  And while I have never been one to shy away from too much controversy, the kind of trouble this time would be much bigger than a write up.  I could even lose my job for failing to do my duties.  To some that may not seem like a big deal, after all, I should be standing up for my students and their rights, my own opinions, I should protect those children that I teach from the tests.  But my job is vital to my own children.  My job is our health insurance.  My job gives us just enough money so that we can pay our bills.  I wish my husband had a huge paying job, he doesn't, and so we are a very dependent two income family.  So losing my job refusing tests just isn't something I can rationally do and in a sense, I am not sure I should be the one refusing the tests anyway."

7,000 photos of school lunches are being passed around the Internet. Be aware that your school might be next as this is a hot topic (and has been for years.) Before you know it, you might find that your school has a pic. My school is blessed with amazing lunchroom staff who work hard to serve up great meals. In fact, for their Thanksgiving meal, there are people in town who come to the school to eat it is so good. It is hard with the money they have to make the meals, but we can do better. Delicious lunches are one way to make everyone's day brighter and school to be a place people want to go.

You can make videos. You don't have to spend money or get too fancy. Digital storytelling is for every teacher. Take a look.

Under enormous pressure to reform, the nation's public schools are spending millions of dollars each year on gadgets from text-messaging devices to interactive whiteboards that technology companies promise can raise student performance.

Great article David. I just posted it to my facebook. I've been saying this for a very long time. Of course when I got to this campus there are white boards in almost every instructional venue.

Post article against spending money on iwb - I disagree.

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."

This is an absolutely incredible blog post regarding the influx of stimulus money for 21st century classrooms and how it will (or won't) impact student learning without attention paid to instructional practices.

Fascinating way to create virtual servers.

This software lets you take one host PC server and this lets you virtualize servers. In Walton County - have 100 servers and 60 are virtual. All independent and have their own IP address and appear completely independent -- they have 6 blade servers. This does cost money. This would let me move the Accelerated Reader and Accounting system to separate "virtual servers" and if one needed to reboot, I could reboot a "virtual server" and not the physical server. This is from an expert IT - Jack Higgins, Network Analyst - Walton County schools in Atlanta, GA -- met by accident in the Atlanta airport. A lot of these bookmarks are from him!

A video about the students in Texas and their struggle to raise money to come to the Flat Classroom conference - this is a great piece and captures so much of the essence of what makes this project so special - it is so much bigger than any of us and a HUGE undertaking for any teacher - but is so worth it. I find it so interesting that so many schools don't have "room" in their curriculum for these experiences.

The race is on! Yuil give Cuil a run for it's money! What does Google think?

A San Francisco wiki services provider has just finished a multiyear project under which it gave teachers all over the world 100,000 free wikis. And now, it is doubling up and getting set to give away another quarter million. The company, Wikispaces, decided in 2006 that it would make helping teachers use the collaborative software to further cooperation between students, both in their own schools and with schools in other cities and countries, a cornerstone of its business. But while Wikispaces hasn't made any money directly from the project--and in fact has incurred significant costs due to supporting the teachers' use of the wikis--co-founder Adam Frey said the company has found that the educators are just the kind of evangelists that can aid a start-up in building a business.

Game for students to learn about money

What Would You Do with $200 to Keep Creativity and the Arts Alive? Whether it's exposing your students to classical music, a theatrical production, or even a class field-trip to the art museum, there is never enough money to go around-especially when it comes to the arts.

This from my email: "This is Natasha Dantzig for the TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) Conference. I'm writing to let you know that organizers of the TED Prize have announced an open challenge in support of author and philanthropist Dave Eggers and his 2008 TED Prize wish to collect 1,000 stories of private citizens engaged in their local public schools. Each year, three individuals are granted the TED Prize, which provides winners with a wish to change the world, $100,000 in seed money, and the support of the TED community in making the wish come true. As an extension of Eggers initial wish, the open challenge asks individuals to design and implement new projects for local public school students. The three winning entries will receive a pass to the sold out TED2009 Conference to be held in Long Beach, California on February 4-7, 2009. " Good luck with sharing. I find it interesting that the projects that are emerging between public and private schools and crossing the lines and boundaries between us (which is what we should be doing) could only be submitted by a public school person and then, may not be considered because it can only be for public school students. In some ways, the writing of the proposal itself is limiting because it doesn't see the vision of what is truly happening in education.