Inspiration to Teach

http://voicethread.com/book.swf?b=183026

Expo at OCM BOCES

I had a chance to go to Syracuse for an Expo of learning tools.
David Jakes Keynote was inspirational and simultaneously grounded.

Seeing a number of demonstrations of great tools left me reflecting on where we are headed in Ithaca. There are super options- that seem affordable-to remediate, differentiate, and excite students.

Planning needs to take place:

• how much hardware is needed to provide enough resource for students?
• what should students should be doing?
• what to pilot and what to make universal?, and
• who makes these decisions?

Here are some of the vendors/products we saw:
1 FastForWord http://www.scilearn.com 15K/school… looks good though. Fast ForWord offers support for special needs students.
2 READ180 http://teacher.scholastic.com/products/read180/ I got kit
3 Achieve3000 http://www.achieve3000.com/
4 Blackboard http://blackboard.com
5 Learning Objects http://www.learningobjects.com/campuspack.jsp
6 Tactus http://www/tactustech.com
7 RMEducation http://www.rmeducation.com
8 ExploreLearning http://www.explorelearning.com/ Gizmos has some good 3-5 modules. (20 and 20 to go)
9 CarnegieLearning http://www.carnegielearning.com/index.cfm
10 McGraw Hill Acuity http://www2.ctb.com/acuity/aboutAcuity.shtml
11 Performance Pathways http://www.techpaths.com
12 SchoolWorld http://www.schoolworld.com/
13 WebGrader http://www.clihome.com/wg/home.asp
14 Curriculum Mapper http://www.clihome.com/cm/
15 Pearson ELLis http://www.pearsondigital.com/ellis/

Hats

These are hats in Williamsburg.

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An Example of the Public/Private Boundary Dissolving…

MySpace photo prevents teacher certification, lawsuit follows

May 7th, 2007

MySpace
related headlines for students and educational organizations continue,
this time the headline concerns a 27 year old college student seeking
teacher certification. The headline from May 6th reads, “Woman denied degree over photo, sues university.”
According to the accompanying CNN video, the student was serving as a
student teacher when her cooperating teacher saw a captioned photo on
her MySpace account referring to herself as a “drunken
pirate.” She was banned from returning to the school to complete
her student teaching, and upon graduation her “education
degree” was changed to an “English degree.”

It will be interesting to follow this case and see what the judge
rules. It seems dishonest and questionable for the university to award
an English degree instead of an education degree to this student, if
indeed she fulfilled all the requirements for an education degree. I am
not sure what the standard for reasonable actions on the part of the
university are in this case, however. It seems the student should have
some due process rights, and apparently she did appeal the decision to
the university unsuccessfully, but I am interested to know what the
college’s reasonable range of actions are in denying someone
teacher certification based on a MySpace photo are.

According to this story, the only thing which suggested this student
engaged in inappropriate behavior was a photo caption. The photo itself
did not show the student drinking alcohol. Did the student have a
previous police record of public intoxication convictions? The student
is 27 years old, so is above the legal drinking age…

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Smell the Flowers

This morning I was walking down the block toward one of the schools I get to work at. A young mother was pushing her daughter along in a stroller, and just as they went by, the girl, a little one, asked, “Mommy, what’s that smell?”

I inhaled as the mother answered in a lively way that her nose was stuffed up, but that many plants were blooming and making the smells.

As I inhaled again, I smelled lilacs that I would not have noticed.

Nothing like laughing !

 

This is a piece of a lesson for a class that involves visual literacy and written expression.

Post a picture and ask students to react to it by commenting. The comments will become available as you choose to approve them, and can serve as a prelude to a discussion.

A colleague, Janie Clark, suggests having students write about came before what is happening here, what is happening in the picture, and what comes next. -Super idea!

Nothing like laughing !, originally uploaded by dhammza.

Please comment. Write a sentence or two based on this photo.

 

Second Grade Communities Blog Project

We have kicked off a great project at http://kidscom.wordpress.com where students can display some drawings and writing related to their communities and then get comments. The commenting has been going well, and I am particularly excited to see if we can grow this and some similar projects to, as Will Richardson says, “give the students’ work some wings.”

If you are reading this, hop over to that blog and make a comment. (Note: your comment will not appear until approved; comments are moderated.)

Constructing the Global Classroom

This Sunday afternoon NYSCATE session was led by Bill Reilly, Disney 2006 “Teacher of the Year” teacher award winner. He gave a fantastic 4 min video presentation on global connection and making learning come alive. While on the Half Moon in New York Harbor on 9-11, and in the weeks following, he was inspired. Started the The Global Coalition. This links kids from all over the world.

This year they have been making video newscasts (with Pinnacle Media Plus.)They get comments and are incorporating them to improve. (estimate 6-8000/broadcast)

They also do emailing using ePals primarily. It provides secure email for schools that teachers and admins can preview. He has located 50% of his contacts that way. They are inviting schools to listen in and join.

They use Skype. He showed a video of a Skype conference that took place between his class and one in Russia yesterday. Engagement was palpable. They started a school in Belize, have sent peace flags around the world, collected art, sold the art from around the world and donated proceeds to support the school. Children in Zimbabwee were living on a bowl of porridge a day are now living on milk, eggs, and meat from animals purchased by his kids. Plans are for a youtube funraising event.

Four years ago he felt that he could not do much. Now he is inspired.

Possible partnerships are sprouting in my mind. He suggests choosing one or a couple schools to communicate with.

I spoke via Skype with Mikhail in a small village in Mordovia, Russia, and ESL teacher there. The connection was warbly, butI will find some ways to replicate this back in Ithaca.

Check out the unit at this site.

You do not need to be a world leader or a rock star to change things. Butyou can’t do this.

LightningStruck.JPG

LightningStruck.JPG, originally uploaded by ayale6.

Have you seen a tree splintered like this? The shards were splinters like toothpicks ranging from 1 inch to 15 feet long.

Will Richardson in Ithaca

Will excited a room full of about 30 area educators today. He did a super job presenting and responding to the needs of the group.

Best of all, he confirmend my sense that we are on the right track in our home town.

Most of the content he covered is at Will Richardson’s Resource Kit