April 2009 Blog Posts (144)

JEM Earth Summit Begins!

(This post is duplicated on the JEM site)

It has been an amazing four days. We left Honolulu Saturday night and flew more than 10 hours to get to Newark, NJ mid day Easter Sunday. Our plane had to circle for more than 30 minutes before being granted permission to land. We were greeted warmly by staff and family of The Buckingham Friends School who loaded up all of our luggage and drove us to the school 90 minutes away. The weather was chilly (40's) but clear. My first host family was… Continue

Added by Lynne H on April 16, 2009 at 8:07pm — No Comments

Thursday, April 16th

Today was a pretty good day. Here is how my lesson went:

1. Sponge

2. Review for the Biggest Gainer

3. Lesson 2.1 in our Filling and Wrapping textbooks.

The sponge was fine as was the Biggest Gainer review, but the lesson fromt the book was great! We were able to use manipulatives to find volume and surface area. There was a couple of problems (ie, a few blocks were thrown) but overall, it went very well. It even allowed me to show students the formula for volume… Continue

Added by Ryan Churchill on April 16, 2009 at 2:30pm — No Comments

Teachers Aren't Getting Enough Support

In 1995, David Tyack and Larry Cuban published a book entitled,

Tinkering toward Utopia: A Century of Public School Reform . In this book they argued that while numerous innovations had occurred within the American public school system during the Twentieth Century, most of these innovations had occurred around the… Continue

Added by Andrew Pass on April 16, 2009 at 1:22pm — No Comments

Wednesday, April 15th

Today was a good day for me. All three of my 90 minute classes went really well. Here was my lesson plan:

1. Sponge

2. Biggest Gainer notes

3. Finish Problem 1.3 (end of Chapter 1 in our Filling and Wrapping books)

4. Start Chapger 2 (problem 2.1)

The notes went well for all three classes--we solved some real world problems involving dividing ribs among people at a family get together and finding out the correct amount to tip at Texas Roadhouse for a bill of… Continue

Added by Ryan Churchill on April 15, 2009 at 3:57pm — No Comments

Open Letter to Secretary of Education Mr. Duncan

First I have to confess I did vote for Obama, so my dissappointment in the statements of the New Education Secretary is leaving a bit of a sour taste in my mouth.

"Secretary Duncan also noted that the budget overview includes a $500 million grant program for a new federal-state-local partnership to improve retention and graduation rates, particularly for low-income college students. Funds would support research into what works to help increase college completion." Wow, didn't that… Continue

Added by Kelley Irish on April 15, 2009 at 3:00pm — 1 Comment

A Pencil Lab

How bizarre would it be if a school had a pencil lab? You know, a place where classes went to use pencils, instead of having pencils available in the classroom. What about a textbook lab? Should schools have "pencil teachers" or "textbook teachers"?

If pencil labs/teachers and textbook labs/teachers sound so ridiculous why do we still have computer labs? As the First Decade of the Twenty First Century comes to an end we've come to a point when technology (computers) should not be… Continue

Added by Andrew Pass on April 15, 2009 at 2:29pm — No Comments

Illinois Gifted Day in Springfield, April 29, 2009

Illinois Association for Gifted Children (IAGC)

http://www.iagcgifted.org

Springfield Gifted Day - April 29, 2009

Mark your calendars and plan to join hundreds of gifted and talented children, their parents, and their teachers from across Illinois for Springfield Day 2009 in Springfield, our state capital. Last year over 1,000 parents, students, and teachers participated and the state funded $2 million for gifted education.

This is the first time in five… Continue

Added by IAGCGifted on April 15, 2009 at 11:49am — No Comments

Replacing the Daily Planner with an iGoogle Page

Every year, students receive a daily planner before the start of school. Depending on the grade level, some teachers will spend a day showing students how to effectively plan their week. For most, this is a practical tool that has worked for many years. However, it is also a tool that many students lose. What if it was…

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Added by Andrew Marcinek on April 15, 2009 at 10:28am — No Comments

Getting my Year 2 class on the net!

I am very eager to get my class of 24 Year 2 students interacting with the world wide web.

A year 3 teacher is doing wiki's with his class. Although a great idea and tool it would be much too tricky for my class.

A prac teacher I had back in 2007 had a fantastic website solely for his Year 5 class. Its fundamental functions were a blog for each of the thirty students nicely contained within the website itself and a place for their work to be uploaded whether it were… Continue

Added by Mr Maloney on April 15, 2009 at 12:20am — No Comments

Rethinking Current Events with Newsvine

If there is one thing students and teachers despise it's clutter. One way teachers create clutter is asking students to print out a current event. Students print out weekly current events, read and summarize it, have it graded and then throw it out. I found more current events lying on my floor or in my trash than any other classroom document. Cringing already teachers? Fear… Continue

Added by Andrew Marcinek on April 14, 2009 at 6:27pm — 1 Comment

Net Generation Education Project

I recently participated as an Expert Advisor and Judge for the Net Generation Education Project, and it was an incredible endeavor. “Technology in education” is a concept that is thrown around a lot lately, but seeing it in real action as I did during this project was amazing. Prior, I would have no clue that 300 students from various schools, separated into random groups, from around the world could truly collaborate on this type of task and… Continue

Added by Nathan Koenecke on April 14, 2009 at 5:29pm — 1 Comment

Tuesday, April 14th

Today was a little more difficult than yesterday. The students seemed to have a bit more energy and seemed to be a bit more talkative. Nevertheless, here's how the day's lesson went:

1. Sponge. 1 problem over what we were doing in the Biggest Gainer and one over what we are currently covering in our CMP 2 books (that is, surface area).

2. Review for Biggest Gainer. We spent about 30 minutes solving problems that were similar to those on the Biggest Gainer post-test. I gave a few… Continue

Added by Ryan Churchill on April 14, 2009 at 3:30pm — No Comments

NECC09 in Washington, DC will feature LOTS of Second Life activity

Hey, ya'll. Just want to toss out there that one of my favorite networks, Second Life, will be getting a lot of attention at ISTE's NECC come June 27-July 1 this summer.

I'm helping facilitate two 3-hour workshops on the topic, a 3-day running Second Life Playground, and a Birds of a Feather. I'm also helping put together a BOF on the topic of my favorite new VW for kids, Quest Atlantis: I'll be a bizzy bee, for sure. You can see (and register for, if you wish!) all our workshop and… Continue

Added by Scott Merrick on April 14, 2009 at 12:56pm — 2 Comments

Pageflakes issues

I built a pageflakes page as my ning dashboard as Mr. Hargadon explained in an older blog post. But now it doesn't work. I created a new ning (it's private) and I tried to get the rss feeds into pageflakes and it keeps giving me an error.

Anyone have any idea what's wrong.

Added by Corey Lynn on April 14, 2009 at 11:39am — No Comments

Vote for me - ISTE Connect Contest

Vote for my image on ISTE Connect!

Click this Link to vote: (selec the radio button next to this image)

http://tinyurl.com/c9sq4m

This is the image I created using Wordle.org and the theme for funniest Ed Tech photo contest. How many votes can this image get. Let's see if i can get at least 10... Hook a brother up!…

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Added by John Costilla on April 14, 2009 at 11:06am — No Comments

Using Internet Story Boarding Tools in Education

[This is a partial reproduction of the original post at www.EmergingEdTech.com, where I blog about the expanding array of free or low cost web based tools that are being used in instructional environments to better engage students, and to enrich the learning process. Stop by and check out a topic of interest today! - KW]

Today, the Internet abounds with tools that enable people of all levels of creativity to develop “digital… Continue

Added by Kelly Walsh on April 14, 2009 at 7:30am — 1 Comment

TP's Edcast Mix

I'm messing around with NPR's custom-podcast tool.

Just created a custom-cast that ostensibly will fill up with NPR stories about education and digital culture.

First story that popped up on my iTunes library was about colleges dropping textbooks in favor of e-books.

Here's the link to my mix:… Continue

Added by Shelly Blake-Plock on April 13, 2009 at 9:59pm — No Comments

Just wanting to put this here so I can come back and think about it.....

eSchool News article last November about a Harvard Ed prof and the seven skills kids must have before leaving K12. I know this is a rehash of stuff we see everywhere, but I want it in a place I come back to so I can think about it.

1. Problem-solving and critical thinking;

2. Collaboration across… Continue

Added by Karen Maginnis on April 13, 2009 at 8:40pm — No Comments

My twitter link is http://twitter.com/4thgrdteacher

Twitter me. I'm a fourth grade teacher looking to do some collaboration work with another fourth grade classroom. Let's plan it for the Fall 2009 school year. Let's start planning early to make it successful for our students.

Added by Eureka McCormick on April 13, 2009 at 5:30pm — No Comments

Monday, April 13th

Today I gave a pre-test for our new Biggest Gainer unit. So, I guess I now need to describe what the "Biggest Gainer" is. The Biggest Gainer is a program here at Western Middle School that the math department uses to help our students review for the CATS standardized test. It is quite simple in idea. It goes through 2-week cycles. In week 1, students start by taking a "Pre-Test" over a unit that they learned this year. The pre-test helps us see where students are lacking in skills within a… Continue

Added by Ryan Churchill on April 13, 2009 at 3:30pm — No Comments