When you first see the word FREE about a product, you get excited. right? Free - for me? Yeah! Of course, you’re going to jump at the chance of getting something for FREE.
What does that mean to you? Do you value it if it is FREE? Let’s take a look at what that might mean now in these scary economic times.
So you joined Google Groups, use Google Docs, uploaded a video to Google Videos, made a Google Site with Pages. Those are FREE and cool. I agree. Have you read the Terms of Use? Here's an excerpt from Google's Terms.
11. Content licence from you
11.1 You retain copyright and any other ... more...
The keynoter for the pre-conference of K12 Online Conference Stephen Heppell shared this video on YouTube.
I’ve been thinking about this for as long as I can remember. Schools have to change to keep up with our students. They use technology everyday and schools ban that technology. I worked with independent study programs where students who may have been at risk worked at home and had jobs. Once or twice a week they met at school to follow-up with assignments and sometimes to work on projects.I like the idea about using school as the place for teamwork and projects. Letting students collaborate online using: text messaging, cell phones, and social networks. Use school for teachers to collaborate. That’s what we’re doing in eCoach: providing online private and public spaces for confidential issues and sharing best practices. Also having a place for teachers to co-author projects and not reinvent the wheel. We can do it!
more...
Comments: 2
Last Comment By Barbara Bray October 15, 2008 -- 10:23 PM
The K12 Online Conference starts with the Pre-Conference on October 13. Each of the presenters are posting their presentations as podcasts 20 minutes or less. I am presenting the findings as an audio podcast and PowerPoint presentation. The teachers and students did all the work. Pat Lusher and Cecelia Nauda are coordinating the EETT grant and provided data, documents, and other information included in the powerpoint or as separate files below. Nancy Kuznicki and Donna Blanton shared podcasts about the projects. This presentation is on Thursday, October 23 (Day 4).
I created several teasers with different tools and decided on a short video trailer for my presentation at the K12 Online Conference. We were asked to prepare our presentation in a 20 minute downloadable format. What might be the best way is to create a website with downloadable presentations, videos, podcasts, and files.
What is my presentation about?
I have been very lucky to work with some amazing people in Pinellas County Schools, Florida with the EETT grant for cross-age cross-curriculum projects. This meant that 109 teachers and eMentors were going to design and implement six 6 week ... more...
I have been reviewing online and face-to-face courses to determine effectiveness. One thing I did notice is the amount of busywork and difficult assignments in both cases that really didn’t meet the objectivess.
Let's rethink how we deliver our curriculum so we don’t just give work to make sure our students are doing something. A difficult course may be one that provides endless activities that may or may not be relevant because the instructor wants to make sure they touch on multiple products or ideas.
The K12 Online Conference 2008 invites participation from educators around the world interested in
innovative ways Web 2.0 tools and technologies can be used to improve
learning. This FREE conference is run by volunteers and open to
everyone. The 2008 conference theme is “Amplifying Possibilities”. This
year’s conference begins with a pre-conference keynote the week of
October 13, 2008. The following two weeks, October 20-24 and October
27-31, forty presentations will be posted online to the conference blog for participants to download and view. Live Events in
the form of three “Fireside ... more...
Comments: 1
Last Comment By Ken September 15, 2008 -- 08:38 PM
I am learning different programs to create a teaser for my presentation at the K12 Online Conference on Cross-Age Cross-Curriculum Projects from Pinellas County Schools in Florida. This presentation will be sharing how these projects were developed, impacted student achievement, and new projects they are starting this year. Here’s one I made this morning with Animoto. Each of the presenters will probably create one or more teasers for their presentations. I’m still learning so will probably make a few more with different programs. Any feedback is welcome!
I cringe when I hear anyone say that school is/was boring! Isn't it time we put our (really) best practices back in school? School reform has brought about many changes through the years, but the one area that has really been catching the joy of learning again is career technical education and regional occupational programs (CTE/ROP). Students that do not pass a high school math class are required to repeat it. Ugh! No wonder a student can feel bored if he or she is forced to sit in the same seat and hear the same curriculum and still not understand ... more...
Comments: 1
Last Comment By Barbara Bray September 13, 2008 -- 10:22 AM
I was just in Portland and went with my son and niece to watch the Vaux Swifts funnel into a chimney at Chapman Elementary School. There must have been over 50,000 swifts flying in formation, diving at the chimney, and then flying off again for 2 hours. It was a beautiful dance where the audience (thousands of people) would ooh and ahh as the birds got closer to the chimney and then flew off again.
Then they somehow knew it was time to swirl and funnel into the chimney.
How many times have you heard from students "School is boring?" That doesn't have to be the case. I read Joy in School in the latest Educational Leadership and it all made sense especially now with the emphasis on testing. We need to bring back Joy and an excitement about what people learn. Not just memorization. My take on the points in this article:
Make Learning Pleasurable When you were young, why did you learn? Not what you learned in school, but outside of school. Most of the time it was because you were excited about something. You wanted to learn how to ride a horse - not because it was ... more...
Watch this video from Sugata Mitra from the Lift Conference about his
"Hole in the Wall" theory and the absence of formal
teaching:
20
minutes but worth watching if we are part of the global society and
want to reach our at-risk students. He shares his "Hole in the Wall"
experiment. Can kids teach themselves?
more...
I read this article on Slate after finding a link to it on Twitter. Maybe this article is a little disheartening but I am finding that I am and others in my family are spending less. I’m relearning all the things I learned when I was a little girl (long ago) that "a penny saved is a penny earned."
Credit made life too easy. See an outfit you need, buy it. So what if you don’t have any money, charge it. Want to go on a trip? Charge it. Pay for it later over several years. It got too easy for all of us and now it’s coming to back to us. We became too greedy and wanted stuff. The best cars. A bigger ... more...
What students do in the classroom is what they learn (as Dewey would say) . . . Now, what is it that students do in the classroom? Well, mostly, they sit and listen to the teacher. . . . Mostly, they are required to remember. . . . It is practically unheard of for students to play any role in determining what problems are worth studying or what ... more...
I haven't been keeping up with my blog. Guess you would say I have taken time to enjoy the summer. Yep! But now it's time to get back and start sharing again. I tried to figure out what innovation means in today's world so I've been doing lots of research and thinking.
Learning is different today than what many of us as teachers thought it was all about. We defined learning as how we teach, what a classroom is supposed to be like, but we didn't define it from the learner's perspective.
All of us are learners. The world is changing and so should what we define as "School". Especially now with information ... more...
I live in California and work around the country. I am appalled about the state of education and how we are leaving more children behind then we ever have before. The focus of "No Child Left Behind" was framed so people thought that we were going to fight for all children. Actually, what has happened is that "Every poor, disadvantaged, learning disabled, at-risk, and minority child is left behind." What kind of country is this that we do this to our future. In today’s SF Chronicle, the headline is 24% of high school students will dropout.
Where are they? What are these dropouts doing now? How ... more...
Comments: 2
Last Comment By Mrs. Shannon Riek July 24, 2008 -- 04:56 PM
I did something different this 4th of July. I joined my sister in a lead car in a 4th of July parade in Orinda, CA. It was so much fun. The convertible was decorated. I practiced my wave and smile. So along the route, I smiled larger than I thought I could. A few times I took pictures.
I even caught a picture of me in the side mirror.
After the parade, everyone went to the park for picnics, music, and lots of tents with art and more.
At night we sat on a golf course with thousands of others to watch a fantastic fireworks show.
In the SF Chronicle today, there is a story about how Google Earth is helping the Surui tribe in the Amazon by telling their story and helping protect their land. This tribe made contact less than 40 years ago and has been outfitted with GPS and computers with Internet access. The new technology is replacing bows and arrows to protect their land. Chief Almir Surui, a college graduate, came to the bay area and asked Google to provide them with technology to monitor illegal loggers and raise global awareness about the destruction of the Amazon rainforest.
Being at NECC in San Antonio is what I need right now; gathering ideas, meeting new and old friends, learning, and more learning. I am sitting in the Blogger's Cafe reviewing the comments from yesterday's Edubloggercon. While I was waiting in the airport I watched Vicki Davis UStream from her session. What is Edubloggercon?
An international all-day "meetup" of educational bloggers and those
using collaborative technologies will take place on Saturday, June
28th, at the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center in San Antonio just
before the start of NECC. All are invited--whether you yourself ... more...
Some time ago I added a post on Women in Art. Cheryl Vitali sent me this link and thought it would be a fun morphing video to watch if you have nothing else to do. I see lots of my favorite actresses - some missing. See if you see any of your favorites.
President Bush’s Reading First program has had problems from the beginning. There are charges of conflicts of interest, budget fights, and now the Department of Education finds that it doesn’t work any better than approaches already in place. There was no difference in comprehension scores between students who participated in Reading First and those who did not.
"There was no statistically significant impact on reading comprehension scores in grades one, two or three," Grover J. "Russ" Whitehurst, director of the Institute of Education Sciences, the Education Department’s research arm, ... more...
In redefining what learning in the 21st century means, I reflected on what learning means to me. I see each day and moment as a learning opportunity. I just came back from a long walk in a beautiful park where the birds were chirping. It was so peaceful and a great place to reflect. I stopped at a bridge over a lake and stood quiet for ten minutes just looking around and taking everything in.
I saw a colorful male mallard duck with his mate. Some questions popped into my head (even though I already knew some of the answers):
Just read Accountability, Yes. Teaching to the Test, No by Patricia Deubel and have some thoughts. Deubel wrote that before NCLB, many teachers closed their doors and taught what they wanted. There was little accountability on what was taught. However, with NCLB, the pendulum swung way to teach what is taught on the test. She also mentioned teaching to the state standards.
Since I work in multiple states and have most of the standards, I see many inconsistencies between states where some are more rigorous. All have too many standards that touch on content that may or may not be relevant. Historical ... more...
David Warlick is presenting today in Arkansas with Pat Wolfe about what's happening inside and outside of the brain. [2 Cents Worth] Wish I was there but next best thing is to follow David's blog. This quote he wrote is great:
"You don’t grow brain cells. What grows are dendrites, and Dittos don’t grow dendrites!"
Pat shared MRIs of an MRI reading of brains when ... more...
’I am trillions of cells sharing a common mind--I am life!’
“Oh my gosh, I’m having a stroke! I’m having a stroke! And in the next instant, the thought flashed through my mind, this is so cool!”
You want a guided tour of the human brain? Follow Harvard-trained neuroanatomist Jill Taylor’s extraordinary account of the cranial hemorrhage that shut down her left brain when she was 37 years old. But the talk’s value — its preciousness — lies less in the plain-language, enthusiastic science it offers us, than in the door it courageously opens to the mystery of the brain’s right hemisphere ... more...
Looking at the digital native, you see someone who has been part of the gaming world most of their lives. Can games help prepare them for their future? From “The Gamer Disposition” by John Seely Brown and Douglas Thomas, I realized that there are multiple characteristics that can also prepare gamers to be leaders in the business and education worlds. The multiplayer online games expect users to be quick, be able to adapt and evolve as games change, and know the rules, tips, and even make the rules as they progress through this new type of social system.
Brown and Thomas share five key attributes ... more...
Comments: 1
Last Comment By Barbara Bray May 29, 2008 -- 01:51 PM
USA Today shared an opinion by Wendy Purlefoy about which one of the candidates is really the education candidate. She lists real issues that need to be considered including:
....candidates should answer these five questions:
Fifteen percent of our nation's schools are overcrowded.
As a result, teachers say they spend an inordinate amount of time
policing classrooms. Do you have a plan for relieving this overcrowding?
How will you ensure that children attend schools that are places of teaching and learning, not violence and crime?
Teacher recruitment, retention and quality are suffering. ... more...
I’m a baby boomer. Turning 60 this year. I used to think this was old. Now I feel like it’s a new stone to turn over. Problems with getting older is mostly physical. Most of my fellow boomers are ed techies who love this stuff. They blog, comment, connect, and share maybe even more than the next generation.
Like a lot of my friends I started in the 80s buying the first desktop computers. Think I had the first laptop (weighed 20 pounds) and first Apple (cost me $4,200 then). I was so with it. Loved it. Still hooked. With the new social networking tools, I’m just like my kids ... more...
Have you had enough? I listen and cry. What is happening in our urban schools? The dropout rate is higher than ever and these aren’t stupid kids. They are smart - street smart but we dump them because they cannot pass the tests. I bet I couldn’t have passed the math test when I was in high school. But that’s not the problem. Poor kids are going to be out - trying to get work - without a degree. What can they do? How can we help them?
Will Olkin wrote They Schools in the New York Times today. He quoted a teacher concerned about the status quo and not doing anything that will make a difference:
Thanks to Barbara Cohen of Independent Thinking for tagging me for this cool Passion Quilt meme.
Directions: Find or create an image that captures what you are most passionate for kids to learn about.
I took this picture from the air of the Hayward salt ponds. What I like about this is how you can find beauty from most anywhere. Patterns on the ground make a real quilt to enjoy. The world looks different from above and now with Google Earth, students can find these patterns and leave a placemark with facts, images, videos, and even create an audio podcast. This picture is in our eLibrary... more...
Comments: 1
Last Comment By Andrea Hernandez February 20, 2008 -- 06:18 AM
Have you ever heard of the Eyak language? With the death of Marie Smith of Alaska, this aboriginal language has died. With the spread of English and suppression of native languages, more will end.
Chief Marie Smith Jones, the last fluent speaker of the Eyak language of the Alaskan Indians, died in January at her home in Anchorage. She was 89. Chief Jones worked diligently to preserve her native tongue and other indigenous Alaskan languages. She was the last person to have learned the language the traditional way, taught as a child from her parents. A tribute in the SitNews.
I always knew my heart was focused on children. I believe that every child is gifted and special and wonderful. When they are born, they are so innocent and sweet. My first grandchild was born yesterday and I cannot even tell you the feelings I have. First I was relieved knowing the baby is healthy, then that my daughter was okay, that Cali has all of her fingers and toes and is alert. It didn’t matter if the baby was a boy or girl. I was anxious, relieved, impatient to meet her, wanting to help in any way.
Meet Cali Ann (born Feb 8th)
Cali will be loved and spoiled (especially by me). She will ... more...
Comments: 1
Last Comment By Barbara February 11, 2008 -- 11:13 AM
I keep adding myself to more and more social networks. I twitter, post on Facebook, keep del.icio.us tags, connect on LinkedIn, etc. etc. I know that my children, my nieces and nephews use Facebook daily. Watching what they and their friends post, I wonder if they realize that the world is watching. Alison Miller wrote in her blog Connecting in a Connected World her questions about Facebook and SNet-iquette:
We need to teach people about SNet-iquette (Social Network ettiquette), and the positive and negative effects of their online ’behaviour’, and how they are creating an online ’digital ... more...
As I Twitter and learn, I came across Wes Fryer’s blog Moving at the Speed of Creativity about a new documentary called The documentary film “Two Million Minutes” highlights stark contrasts in the educational experiences, perspectives, and expectations of high school students in the United States, China, and India. The film’s title is derived from the mathematical statistic that following eighth grade graduation, students have approximately two million minutes to spend until they graduate from high school. The film’s YouTube trailer gives a taste for its focus and main points.
At Educon 2.0, there are wonderful conversations that I encourage you to read, listen, and share. Wish I could have been there but have been part of the conversations via Twitter and checking out the agendas, handouts, resoures. Thanks to the conference planners, contributors, and presenters!
Konrad Glogowski from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto provided resources on professional development and designing communities of practice for teachers that I wanted to share with you. I like the way you can use Voicethread as a collaborative research tool ... more...
There is abundant direct and indirect evidence that students from all backgrounds can thrive in environments designed to promote their development. Given the compelling case for the developmental impact of constructive interactions between young people and the adults around them, and the fact that many school people are not adequately prepared to provide these interactions, the obvious place to begin a program aimed at effecting school improvement is in the preparation and support of future and ... more...
On Social Media Citizenship, Alicia wrote that comments are great starting points. Many of the same people are blogging and posting. We used to start our conversations at conference. In fact, I used to go to lots of conferences to network and now I twitter and read and comment on posts. Jan 25-27 Educon 2.0 is going on in Philadelphia.
I would love to be there but am not able to go. I’m going to check out what’s going on virtually. What is Gary Stager really saying? I love when he pushes the envelope. Will Richardson talks about personal learning networks. Kevin Jarrett and Sylvia Martinez ... more...
Tomorrow night (Tuesday, January 22) on PBS Frontline is showing "Growing Up Online," where they peer inside the world of the cyber-savvy generation through the eyes of teens and their parents, who often find themselves on opposite sides of a new digital divide. FRONTLINE producer Rachel Dretzin investigates the risks, realities and misconceptions of teenage self-expression on the World Wide Web. . Here’s a trailer:
If you watch it or see archived versions, share your comments on teens today. more...
Pecha Kucha (which is Japanese for "the sound of conversation") has tapped into a demand for a forum in which people can present, minus boring content. 20 slides each shown for 20 seconds for a total of 6 minutes 40 seconds. Just think of really fast-powered storytelling before the next presenter is up. This keeps presentations concise, the interest level up and gives more people the chance to present. [source]
Go to Pecha Kucha Night to see presentations going on around the world. This was designed in 2003 for designers to show t
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November 7, 2008 -- 08:28 AM
Barbara Bray October 15, 2008 -- 10:23 PM
School reform has brought about many changes through the years, but the one area that has really been catching the joy of learning again is career technical education and regional occupational programs (CTE/ROP). Students that do not pass a high school math class are required to repeat it. Ugh! No wonder a student can feel bored if he or she is forced to sit in the same seat and hear the same curriculum and still not understand ... 
Mrs. Shannon Riek July 24, 2008 -- 04:56 PM
I found another article where a 
Roxanne Clement April 29, 2008 -- 05:26 PM
Pat shared MRIs of an MRI reading of brains when ... 
and sweet. My first grandchild was born yesterday and I cannot even tell you the feelings I have. First I was relieved knowing the baby is healthy, then that my daughter was okay, that Cali has all of her fingers and toes and is alert. It didn’t matter if the baby was a boy or girl. I was anxious, relieved, impatient to meet her, wanting to help in any way.
Lisa Dilles February 10, 2008 -- 01:58 PM
as tapped into a demand for a forum in which people can present, minus boring content. 20 slides each shown for 20 seconds for a total of 6 minutes 40 seconds. Just think of really fast-powered storytelling before the next presenter is up. This keeps presentations concise, the interest level up and gives more people the chance to present. [