Group items tagged

Welcome to Classroom20.com, the social network for those interested in  Web 2.0, Social Media, and Participative Technologies in the classroom. We encourage you to sign up to participate in the great discussions here, to receive event notifications, and to find and connect with colleagues. We have over 66,000 members from 188 countries! Classroom 2.0 is a free, community-supported network. We especially hope that those who are "beginners" will find this a supportive comfortable place to start being part of the digital dialog. Because of spammers, we have to approve all memberships here. While your membership is pending you are still welcome to peruse the site or attend any events!

This is from the website's About page: "The world is now more social. We share, we like, we tweet, retweet, link and generally exchange information on the social web. But how do you keep track of the things you like? Trunk.ly takes care of that for you. By connecting into your social networks, Trunk.ly monitors and collects the links that you find interesting across the social web. More importantly, it indexes the web pages these links point to and builds a personal search engine, so you never have to tag or describe a link again, you just search and Trunk.ly will find it again for you."

Though Twitter's contribution to the world of social media and progressive society was at one time a strongly argued point, there is no doubt today that the popular social media platform has become a valuable tool for various aspects of education. Sure, Twitter can be the perfect place to waste hours on mundane details about people's lives or worthless celebrity gossip. But, the microblogging platform also enables us to create and participate in meaningful conversations concerning education, technology, and society.

Recognizing bias: This 2 ½ minute video uses a pizza restaurant ad to give students a succinct introduction to the concept of bias. It also presents three specific questions students can ask to detect bias in the media and their daily lives. (Social studies, Social responsibility, Literacy)

Interesting article, Pinterest is popping up everywhere...

Dipity is a free digital timeline website. Our mission is to organize the web's content by date and time. Users can create, share, embed and collaborate on interactive, visually engaging timelines that integrate video, audio, images, text, links, social media, location and timestamps.

Can I let you in on a secret? Typing two spaces after a period is totally, completely, utterly, and inarguably wrong.
And yet people who use two spaces are everywhere, their ugly error crossing every social boundary of class, education, and taste. *

Every school library needs an Amy Hamrick. She works at Westerville Central High School in Westerville, Ohio. The educator who nominated this teacher-librarian as a "Down the Hall" candidate pointed out that she not only is an adept media specialist but also puts social-justice issues at the forefront of her work.

"We need to continue reinventing because this is the one place that all the students have in common, more than the cafeteria or the dorms or any other social place on campus," she said. "It's where they learn. It's an extension of the classroom."

Pinterest's inspiration boards have a lot of potential for libraries and other organizations for creating visual displays of resources and services. All of Pinterest's boards and posts can be shared on Facebook and Twitter. Here are some ideas for how you can make the most of this popular social network for your library:

Curate Lists!

The mission of Web 2.0 Labs is to continue to cultivate, incubate, and grow existing and future opportunities for peer learning in education. Educators, librarians, and students are given the opportunity to learn from and work with each other, and to promote the personal and collective value of that work through social media projects. 

A site that you can use not only to create citations but search by topic the sources others have used in their citations. Social Research.

The PSU Online Resource Hub offers a collection of the best tools and resources to support education about the Middle East at the K-12 level. Materials are organized by country and theme and categorized into three sections, background information, news & media, and teaching materials.

Studying about the Oregon State Capitol but can't afford a field trip to visit? Or, do you live too far away from the Capitol to visit? Then consider touring it via a series of short videos posted on the Oregon State Legislature's website. View 2- to 3-minute video segments labeled Rotunda and Seal, Capitol Marble, Tower and Grounds, Senate Chamber, and House Chamber. There's also an 8-minute video about the Golden Pioneer.

This is from the June 2011 ODE Social Sciences Newsletter: "Understanding how to manage money is a skill that is more important today than ever. You can look all around for examples of poor financial decisions. Let us turn that around for our next generation. Financial Beginnings and Operation HOPE offer free financial education programs for students in grades 4-12 as well as young adults. All programs are free and provide age-specific curriculum and activities and are designed to promote self-sufficiency, fiscal responsibility, and encourage active and educated participation in the banking system. The fun, engaging and relevant programs are taught by professionals from the community. Together, Financial Beginnings and Operation HOPE have served nearly 25,000 youth at more than 100 schools throughout the Pacific Northwest." Every year the Office of the State Treasurer sponsors the Reading is an Investment (RII) program between October and March. Anyone who wanted to schedule the elementary financial program, Banking on our Future, could try to time it so it happens when RII is active. http://www.ode.state.or.us/search/page/?id=1707 http://www.ost.state.or.us/read

Information in quotes was taken from Ann Scheppke's post on Libs-Or. The website "is the culmination of more than two years' work by staff at the University of Oregon Libraries, in collaboration with the Library of Congress, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and a number of state agencies and stakeholders" and was partially funded by an LSTA grant. Users have access to "historical materials originally published by Oregon journalists between 1846 and 1922. The website includes more than 180,000 pages of digital content drawn from historic newspapers that include the Salem Capital Journal and the Portland Oregonian." K12 lesson plans are available, although that section is still being developed. http://listsmart.osl.state.or.us/pipermail/libs-or/2011-July/010667.html