Group items tagged

This is my website containing a blog, projects completed in education classes, and links to people and websites that know what they're talking about. It's still a work in progress but it will slowly come to life! 

"For our latest redesign project, Studio 360 asked the New York design firm Hyperakt to rebrand teachers. The design team found inspiration in the words of poet and educator Mark Van Doren."

"48 Great Ways Homeschoolers are Using Pinterest Pinterest has proven itself to be a valuable tool for so many people: photographers, designers, craft artists, wedding planners, moms, and more. It's a great place to discover interesting ideas, organize your thoughts, and pin down resources that otherwise might get lost in the shuffle. Homeschooling parents make up another group that benefits greatly from Pinterest, as they share unit studies, school room inspiration, and fun classroom project ideas. Read on to learn more about how homeschoolers are finding value in Pinterest, and some of the interesting ways they're putting the site to work in the home classroom."

Wiki provides numerous connections to other educators on a global scale looking to connect and collaborate on Voicethread projects. 

"Flipping" is referring to teacher lecture's/instruction being offered in different methods and classroom time being used for project/assignment completion.

One of the first questions teachers new to Google Drive always ask me is, how do you organize your files.  I've gone through several different ways before figuring out what works best for me.  Here are some options. I teach high school, so I have a number of different sections and sometimes more than one course to teach. I also teach a graduate class and have a few other projects going on.

Digital storytelling tool - upload the photos, arrange the photo order and record your story based on the photo being viewed. This would be great to have students retell what happened on a field trip or create an oral creative writing story based on photos chosen by the student or teacher. Students could even create a book project over a novel or short story with this tool.

Cell phones have the capability to become the "Swiss army knife" for student research and organization. First, we explore using cell phones as data collection tools: audio recorders, digital cameras, and digital camcorders. Additionally, we consider how classroom projects can be developed for cell phones: creating ring tones, text messaging, mobile WebPages, and mobile surveys. Finally, we contemplate the future features of cell phones and how those features play a role in learning.

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs Skype Call Hooray! Our second Skype call with Mrs. Wells' 4th graders in Ozawkie, Kansas went much better. I found my web camera, so they were able to see us this time. Since both Mrs. Wells and I were participating in Jen Wagner's project entitled Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, we decided to have our students read the book together during the Skype video call. My students read the left hand pages, and her students read the right hand pages. After the reading was over my class surprised her class with a song. Two of my students were our cameramen. Corey, handled the web camera so our Skype buddies in Kansas could see us, and Wayne used our Flip camera to make a video of the event. We had a few sound issues, and need to learn how to use the Flip camera better. I also need to invest in a better microphone. I created the videos for viewing using Windows Movie Maker. We hope you enjoy the videos. Feel free to leave us a comment.

Great example video of a school project.

This video shows the winner of "Ukraine's Got Talent", Kseniya Simonova, 24, drawing a series of pictures on an illuminated sand table showing how ordinary people were affected by the German invasion during World War II. Her talent, which admittedly is a strange one, is mesmeric to watch. The images, projected onto a large screen, moved many in the audience to tears and she won the top prize of about £75,000. She begins by creating a scene showing a couple sitting holding hands on a bench under a starry sky, but then warplanes appear and the happy scene is obliterated. It is replaced by a woman's face crying, but then a baby arrives and the woman smiles again. Once again war returns and Miss Simonova throws the sand into chaos from which a young woman's face appears. She quickly becomes an old widow, her face wrinkled and sad, before the image turns into a monument to an Unknown Soldier. This outdoor scene becomes framed by a window as if the viewer is looking out on the monument from within a house. In the final scene, a mother and child appear inside and a man standing outside, with his hands pressed against the glass, saying goodbye. The Great Patriotic War, as it is called in Ukraine , resulted in one in four of the population being killed with eight to 11 million deaths out of a population of 42 million. Kseniya Simonova says: "I find it difficult enough to create art using paper and pencils or paintbrushes, but using sand and fingers is beyond me. The art, especially when the war is used as the subject matter, even brings some audience members to tears. And there's surely no bigger compliment." Please take time out to see this amazing piece of art. click on the link below - http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=vOhf3OvRXKg

The goal of this project is to help students around the world understand what school is like for others. This is a desire of mine to help students understand the differences and similarities between their own cultures and the cultures that are foreign to them.

"Ever wonder what it would be like if we let our students pick the tools we use in class? This collection of web 2.0 tools is just that- a list of tools and ideas for what students see as being useful for their learning in and out of school. To begin the project, 8th grade students were engaged in a conversation about what school would look like if all of the rules we currently had were disbanded. They were no longer bound by walls, schedules, age restrictions or standardized tests. No technology was outlawed. It was a bit of a hurdle for them...after eight years of the current school arrangement, it was difficult for them to imagine anything else. With a little encouragement and a push they rose to the occasion, and here are the tools they think we ought to consider using. As this is a dynamic site, there may be some entries in need of editing. We will get to them! We left the duplicates in for emphasis as well as different points of view. Enjoy!"