Whole School: Sustainability: Global citizenship teaching resources - TES
Tons of global citizenship ideas for your school. As you work to reach the world, these maps, images, and lesson plans can help you get started.
If you want to see what a massive collaboration of elementary students looks like, meet "A week in the life" the Flat Classroom project for kids ages 8-10. Here is a recent wiki.
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| Ken Russell |
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| Prince Harry and model Florence Brudenell-Bruce |
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| Sir Alex Ferguson birthday |
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| Google tv |
QR Code Treasure Hunt Generator from classtools.net
QR Code treasure hunt generator. Classtools.net has long been my favorite place for graphic organizers, easy video game review games, and Fakebook, but now there is a QR Treature hunt generator. It does all the work for you. So cool. Take a look and do a kind of treasure hunt kids will love.
Since August 2006 this Media Center has been blogging, sharing links and information. Such useful information here. Sometimes we show by example more than we can say by giving assignments. You can tell students blogging is important but if you don't do it. You can also see how assignment are given on this blog. For teachers and media centers to review who are considering blogging.
ICDL - International Children's Digital Library
International Children's Library includes many ebooks that you can download onto your Kindle. The books are organized by grade level and there are over 10,000 of them. (A big hat tip to Peter Fogarty who shared this resource over at the TES forum, a place where I find a ton of great things for my classroom.)
Challenge Toolkit - Resources - TES
A challenge toolkit. If you are a gifted and talented or teacher of children who have challenges, there are 50 activities in this powerpoint that can you can adapt to any subject.
Active minds make learning fun - Resources - TES
Tons of resources and lesson plan ideas in this article. The best thing is that every idea is linked to free downloadable items.
firework safety - Resources - TES
If you are a parent or homeschooler, you'll have time to use this powerpoint between now and New Year's. This is a lesson about how to design a poster for firework safety.
This wiki used at MICDS (a great school in St. Louis where I've been before) is a Lord of the Flies survival game using a wiki. This is a great idea for a lesson plan with collaborative writing as well as understanding the book content.
For those who have told me that there is no use for pinterest in schools, here is a common core pinterest curated by Liane Courtney. Most web 2 tools can be useful, it lies in the willingness of users to make them so.
Tons of writing prompts for composition teachers.
Here's Thomas Gladstone's Abolitionist hymnal
I've found something that is just beautiful here that expresses how I feel about an important cause. yes, education is my primary focus and I'll spend a lot of time helping you teach and use technology well. But a person who teaches should have a heart. My heart will be with those who cannot speak for themselves.
Chorus from "I am an abolitionist" taken from this page of hymns that make you ask why.
"I am an Abolitionist!
No threats shall awe my soul,
No perils cause me to desist,
No bribes my nets control;
In freedom will I live and die,
In sunshine and in shade,
And raise my voice for liberty,
Of nought on earth afraid."
January 2012 has been proclaimed National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month here in the US.
I Can Stalk U - Raising awareness about inadvertent information sharing
If you're teaching students about digital citizenship, perhaps you should start at the site, icanstalku.com. It starts off by explaining meta data and the settings in your cell phone that reveal way too much about where you are located.
iPad lesson Plans and teaching ideas
Here is a great list of ipad teaching ideas and lesson plans across a lot of subjects.
How to Create and Share a Pencast | SmartPen.tv
If you want to see exactly how a LiveScribe pen works, this is an excellent tutorial video. It isn't super fast but it shows you how it really works from beginning to end. This demo is how to create a pencast. Although some of you may be doing this on your ipad using some of the new apps, the Livescribe pen is a sub $100 pen that is very powerful. If you prefer to take notes you can record everything on the pen. I've had one and really enjoy it.
11 Tools for the 21st Century Learner
This is a course for Spring Branch ISD which uses a blog as the framework. I also love how 9 hours of professional development is being given for the educators in this course. We need more embedded PD that gives teachers an opportunity to embed their learning in their daily activity. Embedded PD is the key to transformational learning. While there is a time and place for getting away, we have traditionally only used that "away" method when we also need to use the "learn right here" method of delivery as well.
Take a look at what Karen is doing here as you evaluate your pd delivery methods. I also have to admit that Spring Woods High school is one that has been an outstanding contributor to Flat Classroom in the past, so I personally know they are walking the walk here.
Wikis in Writing Education Research - WolfWikis
Although not updated for some time, this wiki has been helpful in my wiki research. This shows the advantage of moving the master's thesis research online. It becomes a useful part of scholarly research. This wiki is dedicated to wikis in writing education research.
The one thing I'd love to see is eventually that such projects would become legacies where another student could build on what has already been created either through a template or handing it off like a baton, but so much of how academia is set up screams opposition to this. But why should a great wiki like this die when the creator graduates?
Lessons learned from using Khan Academy content in a blended learning pilot
Very interesting study on the effectiveness of Khan Academy on the scores of low performing students. The study thoerizes that the success is not the videos at all but the problems and rewards system that accompanies the videos which have a gaming feel. Like many, we assumed the videos would be the predominant learning mechanism for students tackling new material. In fact, the students rarely watched the videos. This result is consistent with some of the observations in the Los Altos pilot. The students greatly preferred working through the problem sets to watching the videos."
New Learning Environments for the 21st Century
John Seely Brown's PDF on the new learning environments for the 21st century based upon a 2005 presentation he did at the Forum of Higher Education's 2005 Aspen symposium.
The quote I like best:
"As the pace of change in the 21st century continues to increase, the world is becoming more interconnected and complex, and the knowledge economy is craving more intellectual property. In this environment, it is critical that we shift our focus from education to life-long learning."
This is a great lead from a thought leader in this area.
If you wonder why I'm digging into the research, it is as I work on my second book on collaborative writing. It is amazing to me that I can find so many more things online than I ever could in the Georgia Tech library when I was a research assistant for the then president of the national Economics Association, Dr. Danny Boston.
I may not be in an institution of higher learning but I can institute higher learning in my daily practice. I want everything I write for publication to be well grounded. I hope that is why those of you who gift me with your presence on this blog will feel free to let me know in the comments if you have concerns or pointers to other work.
This 2004 study on second-language writers determined that although students prefer oral feedback that e-feedback has a greater impact on the revisions process. Online feedback is a valuable tool in the revisions process.
Curriculum changes could spark supply crisis - news - TES
The US is not the only country in government educational induced turmoil. Here is an overview of what is happening in England right now.
"Make teachers redundant or have them teach subjects they are not trained in - that is the stark choice cash-strapped secondaries will face if national curriculum changes proposed this week are introduced, ministers are being warned.
The bleak scenario is predicted by heads’ leaders and teacher recruitment experts if the Government follows the recommendation of its national curriculum review expert panel to make history, geography and modern foreign languages compulsory for all 11 to 16-year-olds from 2014."
January is national slavery and human trafficking prevention month. I don't care if this is an unsavory topic to many, there are more human slaves in our world this moment than in the history of this big globe in the sky. Don't criticize the slave owners and people in early US history if you're not willing to speak out now. There are age appropriate ways to broach this topic. Think about how the people of pre civil war times felt when you toss this topic over in your mind.
January is National Slavery and Human Trafficking prevention month. Celebrate it well and plan ahead. Yes, there are slaves in this country and you can educate students on how to protect themselves as well as bring awareness to what is happening in other places.
Content Filtration: A little dirt for your health?
I was rereading this old post for some writing I'm doing about filtering and it struck me that although this post was written in 2008 it reads like it was written this morning. I think there are some very valid arguments to share as you discuss content filtering in your school.
When asked about how to help kids with allergies, researchers have made the bold statement , "Let them eat dirt! " As I read these articles, I was struck with the parallel to the content filtration debate that rages in education today.
Submissions | Apps for Science
A science app competition with a hodge podge of "winners." This isn't what you think. It is more higher level science websites that provide functions. One of the first mentioned is altmetric which measures the impact of research studies in social media. (Not sure if this is hugely important, but I guess it could be useful to those wanting to respond to the tweets, etc. of an article. I certainly hope scientists would also have offline conversations about these as well.)
Anis Bawarshi and Steven Corbett — Learning & Scholarly Technologies
Overview of the use of efolios in the Expository Writing course at the University of Washington. along with some sample portfolios. Currently the electronic portfolios are optional although having a portfolio is not.
"The six TAs who chose to teach with electronic portfolios discovered many advantages to introducing this technology. They found that students learned to write for a wider audience and were able to better connect to the course outcomes by showing a greater variety of examples such as graphics and links to relevant Web pages. The electronic portfolios also simplified some logistics, allowing the instructors to easily show examples of online portfolios and students to review each other's work. "
Daily Kos: Internet giants seriously considering 'nuclear option' to stop SOPA
If Amazon, Google, Facebook and other Internet allies turn their home screens black to bring attention to the censorship of SOPA don't be surprised. Right now, SOPA is still favored to pass. time to call congress or email them. This website tells you how.
Researchers Build Terminator Contact Lens
Small projectors, contact lenses with displays built in. Here is where we're going. These things make the "ban cell phone" movement even more preposterous. It is about behavior not banning or blocking as limiting behavior is only going to become harder.
8 Amazing Emerging Technologies From 2011
Transmitting data via LED lightbulbs tops this list of 8 technologies from mashable.
By the way, the beginnings of display contacts is here - although it can only put one pixel on the screen (created by your contact) it is the beginning.
Again, we must get at behavior of our students. Because we will move from cell phones to glasses and contacts. We have to focus on helping people learn how to focus on the task at hand and hold them accountable for the work they do instead of playing the role of jailkeeper. Focus may indeed be the most important 21st century skill.
ADHD: Your Brain On Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (VIDEO)
ADHD, medicine abuse, and a video to show you what it "feels like" to have ADHD. This post from Huffington is a great one to share with those who don't understand this disorder. There are still so many questions to ask, especially that of if we've somehow become so desk bound that our physical bodies are crying out for more running and moving, but that is for another post.
So Here’s What I’d Do : 2¢ Worth
It started with Tim Holt asking "edtech gurus" how to actually do it. How to stimulate change.
This is a wonderful post from David Warlick on what he'd actually do. Many of these are great. The tough thing this brings to bear is that unless you can actually do it - it is hard to speak to it. This is why there is room for great practioners who are doing it to share how it works and what the results are. The tough thing is that in the real world, it is rarely simple and interpersonal dynamics often get in the way. The book I'd recommend is Kerry Patterson's the Influencer on this topic.
10 Bad Trends in Ed Tech 2011 #6: Ed Tech Gurus - Holt Think: Ed, Creativity, Tech, Adminstration
Lots of conversation on this guru's post. Funny how the easiest way to get edubloggers to talk is to talk about edubloggers. ;-)
My Wish List for Education in 2012 | Education Is My Life
TEacher AJ Juliani (a Flat Classroom certified teacher) writes a beautiful and profound blog on his wish list. He understand and gets global collaboration in the classroom. Especially moving is this quote:
"My wish list for Education in 2012 is centered around the belief that it is time to try “new things in new ways”. It is time to look for “Next Practices” instead of “Best Practices”. It’s time to put ideas that are unproven into practice, learn from our failures, and celebrate our successes. Here is my wish list:"
Worth a read.
Educating for Global Competence: Preparing Our Youth to Engage the World
Educating for Global Competence: Preparing Our Youth to Engage the World. written by Veronica Boix Mansilla and Anthony Jackson is now available for free here. This is a great resource for educators who want to incorporate Global Competence into their classrooms and schools.
This is a PDF download.
Global Competence - Submit Student Work Now
The asia society would like you to submit student work relating to global competence now. Please share. There are also a lot of great links explaining this concept on this page. You can also download their free book: educating for global competence.
Harvard's components of global competence.
How High-Performing Nations Teach Global Skills | Asia Society
How high performing nations teach global skills.
