The Collaboration Cycle

I just read a fabulous post with an amazingly great resource... the Collaboration Cycle is one of the better ways I've ever seen to explain our role as Instructional Technology Facilitators to teachers and staff at a school. I love that it is a cycle... here is the original post: http://mscofino.edublogs.org/2008/08/28/going-full-circle/
Enjoy!

Wordle in 6th Grade Humanitites

In our middle school we have a Humanities class (SS and LA combined) at each grade. These teachers are doing some really fabulous projects. One of the ones is the use of Wordle to help students explain the 6 Big Ideas of History - Science and Technology, Government, Culture, Geography, Belief Systems, and Economics. The products completed by the students were printed and put on a bulletin board and will be used throughout the year for them to reference as they study any event in history.

The Process:

Students had to brainstorm 20 different terms/keywords that were associated with their Idea. They then prioritized those ideas by which were the most important in describing their Idea. Next, the students typed their keywords into Word (spellchecking was needed) - they would type the most important terms multiple times (Wordle uses the frequency of a word to determine it's size in the final presentation), so "ScienceandTechnology" (all one word) was typed 5 times while a lesser term to describe it say "computers" was only typed 3 times. Each word needed to be separated with a space. The students then copied and pasted their text into Wordle and adjusted the design/colors to suit their tastes and then published their work! We were able to print them off and the students also pasted the url of their published work into their class forum so that everyone could see and comment on them.

Conducting Interviews via Videoconferencing

As many of you by now have figured out I have relocated to Chennai, India. I am working in the American International School here! In the past week we (my husband and I) attended a fabulous presentation for the Madras Day titled the Sea Story, "A special play/performance by the members of Nochikuppam seafishing community, facilitated by the World Storytelling Institute." It was hosted by Eric Miller, Director of the World Storytelling Institute (Chennai). He was nice enough to share a fabulous article he wrote for the education newsletter of the American Folklore Society. This article has great tips for how to conduct interviews via videoconferencing - take a read! http://www.afsnet.org/sections/education/Spring2008/Feature.html

And thanks again to Eric for sharing!

Great Blog Post with Free Resources for Regular and Special Education

Many of these are resources I use regularily. Some of them I've never heard of. This is truly an amazing list and much thanks to Paul Hamilton for posting it!
http://paulhami.edublogs.org/productivity/

Plagerism Videos from Rutgers University

Rutgers University has a great group of 3 videos explaining Plagerism. While they are geared for university level I can see applications at Middle and High School level.
http://library.camden.rutgers.edu/EducationalModule/Plagiarism/

Enjoy!

Summer Hiatus Over

Well, I got so involved as virtual attendee at NECC '08 the end of June, I just stopped posting. And well...then I got so involved having the month of July off, I just couldn't leave the pool to turn on a computer for anything other that minimal email and staying connected with family and friends.
But I am back at work and ready to start back in. I've heard from Katie, Donna and Aaron and they are all getting up and going with new jobs. I hope we can make a go of maintaining the "Think Tank".
I'll be back when I've got some new things to add.