Langwitches Blog Silvia Tolisano

"Twitter, without a doubt, has become the social network for educators to take their professional development into their own hands. Twitter allows teachers to connect with other educators from around the world, join discussions related to their interests and have a steady stream of resources (to help them teach and learn) available to them whenever, whereever and however."

"LearningToday shares with everyone two beautiful posters, that help us remember Bloom's Taxonomy: the Blooming Butterfly and the Blooming Orange."

"Teaching ourselves, our students and other educators how to use screenshooting (images) and screencasting (video) tools is a relevant skill to have that integrates in so many areas. Think Tutorial Designers (A role from the Digital Learning Farm) or the Flipped Classroom model. Being able to create, share and take advantage of readily available screencasts touch upon so many of the skills (create, communicate) and literacies (network, media, information literacy)."

"Curriculum21- A Deeper Cut" Slideshow Presentation

"Thanks to Alec Couros, I found this video titled Cultural Differences by National Geographic. I think it is an incredible example of how "real" cultural differences can be. It could be a wonderful introduction for someone who has never experienced another country, culture and people to "at least" become AWARE that their own culture might be perceived VERY different (even incomprehensible) by someone else. Even if you take only 5 minutes of your time to watch the first segment that shows a group of "Lost Boys from Sudan" and their flight to the USA and their first days/weeks in the country, it will be worth your time! "

"I wanted to share my third presentation slides from BLC11 Transforming Culture in the Classroom"

"I am currently enjoying a wonderful week at BLC11, Alan November's Building Learning Communities Conference in Boston. I wanted to share the presentation slides and resource links to my presentations here on the Langwitches as well. Pre-Conference Workshop: Orchestrating the Collaborative classroom"

"Last year, while our first grade teacher was absent for an extended period of time, I spend a few sessions with them to read a book from the Magic Tree House series, Vacation under the Volcano, and then pulled students out in small groups to record them. You can read about the process and my reflection on this post "Podcasting with First Grade"."

"As an extension to my first blog post "Add a Global Perspective to your Google Search", I wanted to add a video that was inspired by last week's keynote presentation by Alan November at CMI 2011."

"Heidi Hayes Jacobs and I have been working on a curated Global Education site that will bring resources to educators to address global awareness, skills, literacies and competencies in their schools and classroom. The site hopes to facilitate connections between educators and established global projects and act as a clearinghouse for web 2.0 tools, links and books that facilitate, support and encourage global teaching and learning."

"he Global Competence Matrix was created as part of the Council of Chief State School Officers' EdSteps Project, in partnership with the Asia Society Partnership for Global Learning. You can download the matrix (pdf) here."

"When you are multilingual, you are used to the fact that news is being reported differently (from another point of view/perspective) in different countries. Before the Internet, you only knew this, when you were traveling between countries, spoke to friends or relatives on the phone, or were able to get you hands on old media (newspapers or magazines). Since the advent of the Internet and World Wide Web, we are finally able to connect to information and web sites without having to cross any geographic borders or time zones."

"Recently I had created a "Read-Along" book for our first graders to accompany their Magic Tree House podcast and am continuing to have fun creating e-books for my iPad from Word Documents, pdfs and thematic blog posts from Langwitches. Next year, we will have an iPad cart to use with our students and I am looking forward to brainstorming more ideas and opportunities to allow students to create and organize their own e-books on the iPad."

"Should Teachers Be More Like Conductors? This bog post from 2009 took me to the following TED talk by Itay Talgam. Although I am not a musician, nor listen to much classical music, I was mesmerized. This TED talk was geared towards organization leaders, but I so agree with Tania Sheko, that it seemed to directly speak to me as an educator."

"In the School Library Monthly a post titled I.Need.Reflection caught my attention. You can read:I'm acutely aware that I'm flooded with input without having the time to arrange that input into meaningful patterns."

"This is the follow up post of the survey results I shared in "Do Student Jobs in the Classroom Affect Learning?" The concept of the Digital Learning Farm is based on Alan November's work."

"Langwitches readers know that I LOVE my iPad! What I like most about it, that it constantly changes. It is never the same iPad than the day before… a new app was added… an old app was updated… something I could not do yesterday is suddenly possible today… my iPad is constantly growing and evolving."

"You are reading another post in the series "The Digital Learning Farm" based on Alan November's work of "The Digital Learning Farm", which he also outlines in his chapter of Heidi Hayes Jacobs' book "Curriculum 21"."

"I have been working with 5th grade for several weeks to upgrade "The American Revolution", a unit in their Social Studies curriculum. Along the Way I blogged about individual lessons. Bringing in Experts. Transformative Teaching & Learning? The Official Scribe: It's All About Learning Styles & Collaboration"

"I am honored to be able to cross-post Stephen Wilmarth's blog post below on Langwitches. If you are interested to read more about Steve's International Experimental program at the Number One Middle School in Wuhan, China take a look at: Take a Peek into China's First 1:1 iPad Class Learning…Young Chinese Perspective Bringing a 1:1 iPad Program to China"