October 2007 Blog Posts (133)

My experience with Classroom 2.0 as tool for learning and professional development has been a good one. I have been using it with my classes in conjunction with Blackboard (a LMS) for several weeks. The beauty of Classroom 2.0 thus far, is that it has provided my masters students with a collaborative environment to discuss with peers the pedagogical…

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Tale 1

I attended what I thought was going to be an informal gathering of tech types (teachers, animation artists, web developers, small tech business owners) and was astounded to see every presenter pull out their computer and do a formal presentation for 45 minutes followed by 15 minutes of questions. The audience passively conformed, rarely commenting, occasionally questioning. The meeting was held in a local bar back room just to add to how bizarre this is and people pulled the… Continue

Our Pilot Group on the Promethean Board Today.... What a day !

I created a wiki on Active Learning with Technology for a seminar I was facilitating. There are some great video examples of elementary students using active technology. http://technologyactivelearning.pbwiki.com/

If you haven't seen this series of clever, simple, short and clear videos you are in for a treat.



Common Craft : http://www.commoncraft.com/ has developed number of short videos that are going viral on YouTube and elsewhere.

You can… Continue

There is a very interesting conversation going on regarding Marc Prenskys hypotheses on digital natives and digital immigrants it is worth reading and thinking about. Also if you haven't already seen one of the many videos on change, I have included a link to an oldie but…

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"A portal to Connect Classrooms to the World: Global Citizens can Share Talents and Skills with Students. Teachers can find Global Citizens (Volunteers) willing to help in a field of interest that they are working on in their class."

FieldFindr: Where teachers can meet global citizens with skills to share.

It started with a…

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I like to use wikis for much of the work that I do. I think that they allow me a great deal of freedom to be creative in their construction without being overwhelming, give me just enough gadgets

and plug-ins to keep me busy and suit my purpose when it comes to

organization and access. Right now I use one for my planning, another I used with my class last year to gather information about Medieval Europe, a…

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OK - Pakistan signed up and I discovered that the teacher really likes doing digital video projects, so we're working on ways to incorporate a monster theme into kid-created videos with the Karachi kids - an offshoot of the main collaborative effort to build a friendly monster based on the descriptions of 20 or so elementary classrooms from around the globe - and be done by Halloween! Taiwan kids are emailing, Japanese kids sending drawings through the mail, even have a group of the "littlest… Continue

Welcome to my blog! I'm going to write an ongoing blog regarding safety and technology in schools, and how we can use technology to augment the most important facets of our safety strategies. Never before has safety been more on the forefront of our minds as parents, teachers, and administrators. There are so many thing we can do to improve safety, that a frank, and open discussion about our schools' policies and practices can only lead to positive results. I plan on covering…

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This evening the Greeenbush Edusim application got a writeup on http:/ww.Mashable.com !

http://mashable.com/2007/10/02/edusim/

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EduSim is a very cool whiteboard tool that incorporates a virtual, 3D learning environment for teachers and students, k-12. Built on the

open source virtual world software Croquet, EduSim offers a pretty

inclusive way…

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So today, I was back to school after recovering from an awful tonsil infection that left me literally speechless. I had gone to bed late the night before and I have no idea where the energy came to get up this morning and continue vigorously throughout the whole day. I checked in with my cooperating teacher and she gave me a run down of what had happend on Friday. There a few house things to deal with such as finishing up handouts and such. I was able to jump right in with my new unit on… Continue

Voicethread is a new web 2.0 application that gives the user the ability to combine audio with photos in a unique manner. You post your photo story with comments and others can add "voicethreads" to your story, to give one picture many view points. The software is very easy to use and seems effective at what it does. Give it a try, it is worth looking at. At very least it has restored my faith in ease of use for 2.0 applications. Here is a link… Continue