Alison Saylor's Comments

Hi Alison. I was wondering if your students would be interested in participating in a nationwide SAT Vocab Video Contest @ MIT university. Perhaps you have some educator contacts you could direct me to. You can view contest details at BrainyFlix.com Please let me know. Thanks!

Hi Alison,

With your work in Education Technology and Web 2.0, I recommend you take a look at Wiziq's virtual classroom and authorstream's power point presentation platform. Both are web based platforms, have a bunch of features and free basic service.

Hello,

I'm sending out messages to everyone I know right now, and this virtual Ning network is no exception. My name is Evan Morikawa. I am a 20 year old student from Olin College of Engineering (near Boston). I am a part of a group of six Olin students who are taking a year off to pursue interests in education, entrepreneurship, design and technology, which brought us to the logical project of a business that designs collaborative software for schools! I found you in a search for "middle school" on Classroom2.0, and since our project is specific to middle schools and uses new learning technology, I thought you might be interested. Our company is called AlightLearning, and this is our "short" project description:

We are working under the assumption that within ten years, the landscape of modern education will have fully integrated what we now define as new classroom media and tools: video, online collaboration, open source curriculum, and internet-based software. We hope to pioneer a web software tool that acts as a platform for this new media, bringing the power of the web and its tools to students, teachers and parents in a secure, comfortable and innovative environment. More importantly, and unlike many of our competitors, our software will empower teachers to better integrate higher level thinking skills, individualized learning, goal setting, reflection, and effective feedback and evaluation. Our goal is to have our free software at a pilot middle school by April 15th, 2008, continuing to develop and coordinate with our users to create a product that other schools and individual teachers will want to use to improve their students' learning in and out of the classroom.

Our team is currently trying to win an idea competition on Ideablob.com You can find us at http://ideablob.com/3975. We would love your support in the form of a vote within the next couple days, but more importantly we'd love your feedback and comments. Our description on Ideablob is short, and even the one above hardly gets at many of the issues we would like to take a stab at solving, but at least it's a start. Note that winning this contest will raise $10,000, a large and useful sum of money for a web-based company running on “sweat equity” and minimal costs.

Feel free to email me back, post on my profile, check out alightlearning.com, or do anything you like!

Thanks,
Evan Morikawa
evan.morikawa@students.olin.edu

Hi Alison!

How are you doing these days?

Hi Donna, I hope to get more done on this ning after the class is done, maybe we can collaborate then.

Alison,

It's Donna Hebert. I'm really enjoying your class. thanks for putting it together!

Hi Alison, This has been a great class.....I can't believe all the Web 2.0 'stuff' that is out there and I know we only touched the surface.

Sounds like a great start. We're in the middle of wrapping up the term, so I'll e able to give more thought in the first two weeks in October.
Look forward to working with you!
E.

Hi Alison
I have just read your post on Chad Outten's profile regarding corresponding with other schools.

I teach Yr 6 in Sydney, Australia (around 11 -12 years of age). We are about to go on 2 weeks holiday (yay!!) and then come back for the last term of the year. As they are in yr 6, these chn are preparing for high school next year. We have a very multicultural school make-up; Filipino, Samoan, Maori, Anglo-Saxon - and all proud Australians!!

I think it would be fantastic to "hook up" next term - one of our units of work is Identity and Values and I see lots of opportunity for cultural exchange.

Cheers

Hi Alison Sorry this reply is so late but we had a PD day on Friday and a few other interuptions. My email is mirtschin@gmail.com. Would you like me to set up a wiki where we can set up the questions one at a time and the answers can be viewed at by all students with online access. Otherwise email me and away we go.

Hi Rachel, my students are 12-14 years old. Any interest? I'd like to start sending yes/no location questions to you and get some back to start the 20 question game. Let me now. Alison

Hmmm.... what an interesting project you have on the drawing board!
What age kids were you thinking of for the project?
Drop me a line [rshirley@paradise.net.nz], I'd love to know more and can definitely "hook you up" with a class etc!

Cheers, Rachel, NZ

Hi Alison, I saw you were looking for other middle schoolers to correspond with. We're not exactly far - Colorado Springs! If you want to talk with us, we'd love that. I teach 6, 7, and 8th in computer electives labs all day. My direct email is shankls@d11.org. If you want something more global, I certainly understand!

Thank you so much for sharing with me Alison. It gets a little tough at times, especially when it is your own child that is having a rough time of life and loses faith in a system that is supposed to cater for learners and take into consideration their specific needs.
The encouragement and support most welcome and appreciated.
Zane will get there and already, in little over a week I am seeing a change in his attitude. From a child who had all but given up as he was labelled 'Lazy', to one who is now waking me up in the morning to ask what we are going to do next - fantastic.
The Web 2.0 and beyond journey (one that seems to change daily) is challenging and at the same time, exciting and rewarding. I do not know if I would have chosen the homeschooling path with Zane if it was not for the existence of such tool and technologies.
Look out for an email with some contacts for you and a variety of networks here in Australia that you may like to check out. Feel free to share with your colleagues.
Live Love Laugh
Jacinta

Hi Alison,
I know that my son Zane would love to take part - I know he is now at home but not that long out of formal education and may go back to it next year, once his confidence etc is renewed and his disability (chronic fatigue) catered for.
I do have a number of pals in middle school teaching so I shall contact them over the weekend and will send you some details. Global collaboration is I feel one of the most wonderful things about Web 2.0. So many opportunties presented to us all, even if we do not realise it immediately.
I hope that I can be of some assistance from the Australian end to yourself and your colleagues and all in the network.

Jacinta

Hi Anne,

I teach 5 classes (2- 7th graders, 12-13 year old and 3- 8th grade 13/14 year olds in a middle school. I teach computer skills).

I plan to have my students begin a "who am I document" to share with your students to help them learn more about word processing.

I am thinking of starting a blog for students to post their doc to later next week, private so others can't get into it, if you are interested, I'll give you the entry key. Students will be told not to be too specific as to place.

Then perhaps the week of Sept 3rd we can begin daily questions on where you are and you send me questions about where we are. This could be a great geography lesson, Do you live near the ocean, yes, this tells about costal area, North of theequator? which hemisphere and so on, only one question per day.

I'd love to see how it works.

Perhaps it would be easier to communicate via email? subs@e-vo.com

Looking forward to hearing from you! Alison

Alison some of our classes would love to work with you on a joint 20 question project. Let me know further details when you are ready.

Alison I would love to know where you started or what you suggest for me to do. I have set up de.licio.us for all my favourite bookmarks and have started 2 blogs which I am working my through a steep learning curve. My kids brainstorm through bubbl.us and I am starting a couple of wikis with my classes but there is just so much and time is always the essence. What would your advice be for me?