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What do you get when you connect elementary students from New York and Singapore with the single focus of books? You get the Global Book Club (GBC), a Shelfari group organized by George Haines. GBC currently stands at 76 members of students and teachers from different classes from the Diocese of Rockville Centre and Singapore American School. Each week students login to their Shelfari group and have discussions about a variety of books which are self-selected by the students. The discussions are started by the students about books they’ve recently read, and if other students have read the same book, they chime in to the thread with their two cents worth. Here are some examples: Students love adding books to their shelves and sharing what they thought of each book. Knowing that they have a real, genuine audience truly motivates them to write more detailed reviews and improve their spelling, grammar and word choice. Being that this project also emphasizes discussions, we encourage the students to ask questions and keep the conversations going. Students also discovered some new books they probably wouldn’t have ever found, after reading some reviews written by other students. This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 6th, 2010 at 9:21 am and is filed under collaboration. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

ritiques of st

he use of models, so that kids have a vision of where they’re trying to go.

learning target is not just a new term for goal or objective. It means taking a lesson goal or state framework and putting it in kids’ language and making it transparent to the kids, so you’re saying to students, this is what we’re trying to learn today.

R.A.F.T i

topic (T)

role (R) that they will take on individually and as a group, such as marketer, author, blogger, campaign manager, etc

and not just formal learning in the classroom, but informal and even “casual” learning 24X7.

contends that fun is at the heart of why kids play games—and is one of the main things that keeps them engaged and willing to persist in ways that many teachers and parents only dream of

Each classroom is equipped with an interactive whiteboard and a Tech Zone of eight Internet-enabled computers, plus access to digital cameras, remote-response systems, and other tools. And while the gadgets are impressive, they aren't the whole story.

Now, the staff sustain their progress through several strategies. Collaborative Conference is a biweekly meeting of each grade-level team with Forest Lake's tech-integration triumvirate: Scullion, Williams, and library-media specialist Lizzie Padget. Teams use these meetings to address problems and plan their study units, brainstorming ideas for the pre-unit assessment, technology components, and hands-on experiences. Williams also serves as a real-time tech supporter, available to fight fires, coach teachers individually, or stand by in their classrooms while they try something new. Monthly staff meetings are another essential venue for ongoing training. Scullion, Williams, and Padget often ask teachers to showcase the innovations that are working in their classrooms. Lowe, for instance, is the first to experiment with blogs in second grade. Scullion intends to ask her to teach her technique at an upcoming meeting. "Innovations seem more attainable if you see people next door doing them," she explains.

Internet safety & civility Curriculum teaches digital literacy and citizenship Sunday, April 11th, 2010 | Child safety | No Comments by Larry Magid This post originally appeared on CNET News.com In my more than 15 years in the Internet safety field, I’ve seen a lot of programs designed to teach children how to use the Internet safely, but many have missed the mark because they too often focus on children as victims or at least passive consumers rather than as participants in our digital culture. But in this Web 2.0 world, kids aren’t just consuming media, they’re creating it and they have collectively embraced social media as a part of their lives. They don’t go online; they are online–whether on a PC, a mobile device, a gaming console, or whatever comes next.

The Google Docs Viewer allows you to email a link, place a link on your Web page or blog, or embed a stand-alone viewer to read PowerPoint, PDF, and TIFF image files directly in the browser. Right now, if you put a link to a PowerPoint presentation on a Web page, it has to be downloaded and opened with the PowerPoint software on the user's computers. And PDF and TIFF files will not open in a Web browser, either, and require software on the local computer to read these file formats.

If I were to set this up again, I might simply create three domains-- one for staff, one for the middle and high school students with email turned on, and one for the younger students with email turned off, but with log-in access to Docs and Sites, to allow collaborative work to take place in a closed environment. You do not need to have email turned on to use these tools.We used the last two digits of YOG-last name-first initial for the student accounts. In addition, so their real name did not show up in the header of mail they sent, when setting up the accounts, I used the YOG-last name for the last name of the student and their first initial for their first name.