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"There is a difference between Social Media IN schools and Social Media FOR schools. There is a difference between Social Media IN schools and Social Media FOR schools. While social media in schools deals primarily with policies around how to use (or not use) social media in the classroom with students, social media for schools is about storytelling and getting their stakeholders (teachers, students, administrators, parents, community) to spread these stories."

"While my last blog post was focused on developing shareable content FOR schools via social media, I have taken a step back to look at the bigger picture and the different components schools need to consider and gain fluency in order to best harvest the power of social media for them. awareness of the difference between social media IN schools and FOR schools social media strategy for schools social media platforms and tools: characteristics, capabilities, type of content suited for particular platform, image/video sizes characteristics of shareable content"

"I am pleased to share with you an opportunity for Middle School Students to collaborate on a global perspectives project. Mark Engstrom, the Assistant Principal and Middle School Geography teacher at my new school in São Paulo, Brazil, and his collaboration partner, Laurie Clement, a MS teacher in Windsor, Canada, have put together various projects to connect middle school geography students from around the world and to facilitate collaboration among them. This past school year, our students in Brazil worked together with students from Canada, USA and Sweden. They are expanding this opportunity to more schools and countries."

"I spent an intense day with administrators (Heads of School, Directors of communication, admission) at the AASSA (Association of American Schools in South America) Social Media Institute discussing social media FOR schools (not social media IN schools). You can find the documentation including resources and examples in this post."

"I am continuing to document using Google Glass at Schools. What are some ways we can use Google Glass in schools to document learning, reflections, practices and just life at schools?"

"Part of my work, at my school, is to create a framework for our Middle School that will take (already) blogging students from Elementary School and prepare a smooth transition for them, as they move on to High School. I am looking BEYOND the one classroom or one specific teacher blogging with their students."

"I just returned from a consulting/coaching visit to Mount Scopus Memorial College, a K-12 Jewish Day School, in Melbourne, Australia. It was a one day full faculty (K-6) keynote style workshop to set the tone for a four day intense follow up work with the upper primary school teachers and students. Together with Edna Sackson, the Teaching and Learning Co-ordinator of the school, we planned the overall theme, Documenting FOR Learning, of the intense week to connect with the whole school goal of using data to inform learning. "

"During my visit this past January to the Graded School, in São Paulo, Brazil, I met Jamie Tuttle Middle School Guidance Counselor. He told me about an incident at their International School and the response as a community:"

"ou have all been there… Professional Development days at your school… Administration usually choose a topic, design the activities and/or bring in a speaker. Most likely, they will be slides with bullet points…listening…turn to your partners…learning about a new initiative your school will take part in…etc. As more and more educators are building PLNs (Personal Learning Networks) and taking their Professional Development into their own hands, they realize that their in house, school based PD needs to take on new forms as well."

"Our students just finished a second round of Student Led Conferences (SLC) this school year (one in Semester 1 and another in Semester 2). SLCs are a formal opportunity for students to present to their parents about the state of their learning. The students' advisor (a teacher responsible for a specific group of students during the school year) serves as a facilitator to prompt and guide the students if needed, but is a silent presence as the students share their learning with their parents. SLCs are not a time to talk about grades, student behavior, but about learning habits, process, improvements and goals. Although there was emphasis placed on an ongoing documentation of each subject area as learning and reflection happened throughout the school year, a significant amount of time was dedicated to prepare for the SLCs"

"These questions intrigued Ana Paula Cortez, one of our Portuguese teachers at Graded, the American School of São Paulo, and compelled her to explore them with her students. prep--Inspiration: 7billionothers.org--In 2003, after The Earth seen from the Sky, Yann Arthus-Bertrand, with Sybille d'Orgeval and Baptiste Rouget-Luchaire, launched the 7 billion Others project. 6,000 interviews were filmed in 84 countries by about twenty directors who went in search of the Others. From a Brazilian fisherman to a Chinese shopkeeper, from a German performer to an Afghan farmer, all answered the same questions about their fears, dreams, ordeals, hopes: What have you learnt from your parents? What do you want to pass on to your children? What difficult circumstances have you been through? What does love mean to you? Forty-five questions that help us to find out what separates and what unites us. These portraits of humanity today are accessible on this website. The heart of the project, which is to show everything that unites us, links us and differentiates us, is found in the films which include the topics discussed during these thousands of hours of interviews. Objective: Raise awareness of culture and interconnectedness of common themes/threads that connect humans no matter of their cultural origin. Take advantage of our multilingual students to share and connect speakers of different languages. Students: 7th & 8th grade Portuguese Language Learners Project Idea: Middle School students create a video (testimonies, journal type) responding to pre-set prompts from 7billionothers.org (love, happiness, work).Future extension idea: personalize the prompts by tweaking to address specific middle school topic…. friends, family, what do you want to be when you grow up….) Process: 1. Discuss video filming techniques.. observe the ones recorded on 7billionothers.org: Framing, Angle, Stability, Background"

"This is an end of the year reflection by Middle School students after contributing and working on a collaborative Math wiki this past school year. Related blog posts about the Math Wiki project: * Thoughts on Setting up a Student Created Wiki * Setting up and Introducing a Collaborative Student Math Wiki * Math Tutorial Music Videos * Student Thoughts about their Math Wiki (Midyear Survey Results) * Empower Student to Be Lifelong Learners NOT Dependent Learners * Students as Meaningful Contributors"

"What tools and platforms are available to better assist schools in better communicate and market themselves to parents and a community at large? How about creating School Information Network Channels by using diverse media platforms to: * stay in touch * solicit feedback * share upcoming and current events * share different media (audio, images & video) * share students' voices"

"How is geography being taught in your school? Is it a weekly time block designated under the umbrella of Social Studies in Elementary School? Is it a semester or one year required credit course in High School?"

"This post title is "Teaching Information/Research Skills in Elementary School", but this post is as much for adults and older students. Many adults are overwhelmed with the quantity and new kind of media that is available and accessible through technology. Older students in High School and College might not feel overwhelmed, but have never been taught how to navigate, evaluate, save and retrieve the information that they are seeking."

"I just finished two great days participating in the ECIS (European Council of International Schools) IT conference in Frankfurt, Germany. Besides attending very interesting sessions by David Warlick, Jamie McKenzie, Warren Apel (International School of Amsterdam) and Maggie Hos-McGrane (International School of Zug and Luzern) I also had the privilege of sharing two presentation with the other attendees. Below you can find my slides from each of the presentation. For further resources and links mentioned during the presentation, please visit my wiki."

"Writing appropriate emails is part of being a good digital citizen! Students (even digital natives) are not born with knowing the rules and responsibilities. Just as they need to learn to answer and talk on the phone, they need to learn about e-mail writing in an academic setting (to their teachers, Skype partners, project collaborators, administration or their classmates regarding school business). Our third graders have been given access to their school email addresses."

"Recently, I tried to explain to a teacher from another school how we are trying to use iPads BEYOND apps. We have over 100 apps on our school iPads and introduce our students according to age level to a variety of them, but the focus of the use of the devices NEEDS to remain primarily as a tool for: exposing students to skills, characteristic of a "modern learner" critical thinking personal learning transformative learning workflow fluency anytime/anywhere/anyhow creating"

"The Situation: I am working with Middle School students (Grades 6-8 - 11-13 year olds) at Graded, The American School of Sao Paulo, Brazil. One of the vision of our division is to create student blogfolios (Digital Portfolios on a blogging platform) to encourage and support sharing and documentation of learning artifacts and to receive authentic global feedback. We are just at the beginning of our journey to use the blogs to document and reflect. Specifically… Our 8th graders have written a "This I Believe" essay, which they are "upgrading" from a text base essay to a video or audio presentation using images, video or sound to not just "enhance with technology" but to truly transform a reader's/viewer's experience."

"Alan November's concept of the Digital Learning Farm, asks schools and teachers to empower students by giving them relevant responsibilities that allow them to contribute in meaningful ways to their learning community (class/school/etc.). How can we give students the opportunity to CONTRIBUTE versus completing projects that end up in the trash, bottom of their backpack or at best on the refrigerator door for display in their house."