End World Hunger one Vocab Word at a Time!

Free Rice is a site that will donate 20 grains of rice through the United Nations to help end world hunger for every Vocabulary word you get right! Please play and help!

Penguin Resources k2

The World of Penguins http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/penguins/

WebCams of Penguins http://www.penguin.net.nz/viewing/webcams.html

March of the Penguins National Geographic http://www.nationalgeographic.com/marchofthepenguins/index.html

Kidzone Penguins http://www.kidzone.ws/animals/penguins/index.htm

SeaWorld Penguins http://www.seaworld.org/infobooks/Penguins/home.html

National Geographic Kids Critters – there are a couple penguins on here!http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/Animals/CreatureFeature/Adelie-penguin

Fun and Facts about Penguins http://www.siec.k12.in.us/~west/proj/penguins/main.html

Penguin Theme http://www.cdli.ca/CITE/penguins.htm

New Zealand Penguins http://www.penguin.net.nz/

Arcademic Skill Builders

The Arcademic Skill Builder site is WONDERFUL and FREE! Great drill and practice activities for both Language Arts and Mathematics.
http://arcademicskillbuilders.com/

Especially cool are:

New Multiplayer Games - you can practice your Division (Drag Race Division) and Multiplication (Grand Prix Multiplication) skills against other players around the world or your friends!

Wii Formatted Games - check them out here: http://arcademicskillbuilders.com/wiilist.htm

We Need Your Support!

I've been working with a teacher here in our district to create a video for a contest sponsored by Interwrite Learning (Grand prize = Interactive Classroom WORTH $15,000). Mrs. Bumgarner and her students at Hildebran Elementary worked hard to write lyrics and plan out the video and they just found out today that they MADE IT TO THE FINALS!

There are five finalists in each category (K-5, 6-8, and 9-12). Between now and November 8, you can vote for their video online. Online votes will make up 30% of the final score and the winner will be announced on November 27. Individuals may vote once in each category.

HERE’S HOW TO VOTE:

• Go to: http://contest.interwritelearning.com/contest/1/


• Click Login/Register in the top right hand corner. Register to vote and then vote for Mrs. Bumgarner's video!
  

Click here to view voting instructions that you can print.

Please tell all of your friends to vote! Congratulations to Mrs. Bumgarner and her students!

Digg This!

A Vision of Students Today

Food For Thought (at least for me)

http://globalvirtual.blogspot.com/2007/09/what-if-schools-treated-students-like.html

Motivating Readers

I've heard about the great training that Renaissance Learning (the company that owns Accelerated Reader) provides, but this afternoon I was finally able to take part in that training. It was so refreshing to hear RL speak about best practices for Accelerated Reader.

There are many schools that have not used the program in the manner it was designed (and I'm not speaking just about our school district- I believe that it is widely misused). Instead, it is treated as THE reading program at a school and the world seems to revolve around points.

Today, RL representatives reminded us that the program should be used to motivate students to read and that AR is simply the PRACTICE reading portion of a reading program.

Some other best practices of AR:

• Point goals should be set for each individual student, based on the ZPD reading range and the amount of time that student will be able to practice reading AT SCHOOL.
• Teacher intervention and teacher/student conferencing should be happening daily, including after each test. This teacher intervention is CRITICAL to the successful use of AR.
• ZPD (reading range) is actually not correlated to "grade level" range. Students should not be restricted to the books in this level, but teacher/student conferencing and guidance can help make each reading experience a successful one.

If these things are happening, students should be successful (85%+ correct on AR tests), and therefore most all of our students would earn rewards for meeting their goals. (And this doesn't have to be costly prizes! Think FREE when thinking about motivational "prizes"!!)

The goal is to foster the love of reading. We have to keep our eye on the ball and always keep in mind that the purpose of AR is to motivate readers and encourage the practice of reading as part of the reading program.

Making a successful change in the mindset of teachers and administrators will require patience (as we can't expect huge changes overnight), staff development (like today's), and committed leadership who will expect and encourage best practice usage of this program.

I'm excited about the possibilities!
Donna
Cross Posted at ITS Here For You

Some Schools Require iPods?

Cross Posted from ITS Here For You

While more and more schools districts are banning iPods, some are requiring them. According to a New York Times article the Union City school district in New Jersey will be giving out 300 iPods next month. The iPods will be given students with limited English ability to help them sharpen their vocabulary and grammar. A NJ school board member calls it “innovation”. That maybe a stretch. I think teachers have to innovate everyday just to make content relevant to them. Having the support to try something new helps too.

Using an iPod in the classroom is a matchmade in heaven. Students and adults, including me, are very passionate about there iPods. Why not use them in the classroom. If you haven’t check out what an iPod can do, you should, there are tons of educational options. First, they play mp3 files. Mp3’s can be music, but it can also be poetry, audiobooks, or historical speeches. The new iPods can also show video. You could record your own lesson or download United Streaming videos. They will display pictures. Save your PowerPoint as pictures and you can put on your iPod. There is also a Notes feature, which displays text. It displays it similar to a webpage, so you can actually have links to the audio, video, and pictures you just put on your iPod. What do you think?

Cheers…Aaron

Moodle and Battle of the Books Team

We have Moodle now in our district and it was amazing to see the student response to it yesterday. Moodle is essentially an online site that allows students and teachers to collaborate and communicate in a protected environment. Yesterday, students in the Battle of the Books Team at one of our Middle Schools were the first students to use Moodle in our county! They logged in to Moodle, navigated to their teacher's site, and clicked on Knights of the Round Table Forum. Students were then presented with a forum topic of "Introduce Yourselves". After reading a blurb written by their teacher about herself - students were asked to answer 4 questions to introduce themselves:

What is your family like?
What are some of your hobbies?
What is your favorite book?
What are your future goals?

Students were immediately engaged. They were in their environment. They communicate this way naturally. They had answered the introduction question quickly and were teaching themselves Moodle and how it worked. They were helping each other. It was amazing.

Students than began to write their own questions for their peers to answer. Students could see next to their question how many other students had answered, they then clicked and saw what the responses were from their online learning community.

This was a wonderful experience for me - Web 2.0 in action! Engaged students. Collaboration in action. Seamlessly integrated technology. Meaningful. Real-world.

I have one word - WOW!

Best Science Images 0f 2007 Honored

The awards are given out each year by the National Science Foundation and the journal Science for the imagery that best conveys complex scientific information and concepts. Winners of the 2007 International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge.

read more | digg story

Animoto Slideshows

This is ridiculously cool and easy. Animoto (www.animoto.com) is a website where you can upload photos and it will spit back a slide show. The results are awesome. Above is a quick video I made about the drought in North Carolina. I grabbed the pictures from Google image search. This is a great way to grab students attention to start a lesson or even a writing prompt. They offer 30 second videos for free. A full length video is $3 each or $30 for unlimited videos for the year.

Teaching and Learning in the Conceptual Age

Every year our district holds a New Teacher Orientation. This year we were given 2 hours to talk to these teachers! I was so excited - this was a great opportunity and we had so much fun doing the presentation for our new elementary teachers. The presentation we created, Teaching and Learning in the Conceptual Age, is now posted to SlideShare.
View and download the presentation here!

During the second hour we explored project ideas and resources. These are available on our wiki.
http://bcpselem.pbwiki.com/NTO

The Difference Between Flash Memory and a Hard Drive

One of my favorite computer help sites, Of Zen and Computing, published a great article about the difference between flash memory and a hard drive. I really should have thought of this myself, as I often have to explain the difference.

The short answer...

Both are used for long term storage. A hard drive uses spinning magnetic disks. Flash memory is just a chip, it has no moving parts. No moving parts means it is less likely to fail. However, you can't just replace your hard drive with flash memory, yet.

For more information, read the entire article.

Nike + iPod

For Father's Day I got a new pair of running shoes and the Nike + iPod Sports Kit. I have used it for about 3 weeks now and I absolutely love it.

In case you don't what I am talking about, the Sports Kit is a accelerometer that is attached to your shoe. A receiver is attached to your iPod Nano which is allows it to measure and record distance and pace of your run or walk. Personally, I don't care for running, but I do like to walk.

The coolest part is that your run data is synced to a Nike website. The website will track all of your runs and makes note of your quickest times. The part of the website that I thought I would use the least, has turned out to be my favorite. The challenges. Anyone can make a challenge and invite others to complete. You can set all sorts of requirements for the challenge. For example, I am competing in the Terrific Turtle Challenge. I am competing to run/walk the most miles over 21 days. The only rule is that you must be slow, your pace must be over 10 minutes per mile. I am currently in 10th place.



The Sports Kit runs about $30, not bad if you already have a Nano. You are supposed to use Nike+ shoes, but I have read that you can attach to any shoe and get good results.

Some of the cool stuff we saw/learned about!

Higher Ground Gear

Very, very cool laptop bags!




Ed Tech Action Network




Apple Learning Interchange


ESRI GIS Education Community



Nova 5000










DLite Microscope





Lulu.com



These are just some of the neat things we saw in the exhibit area!

School 2.0- Wes Fryer

A few quotes and some of my thoughts from the Wes Fryer presentation on School 2.0- what is it and how do we support it?

It is remarkably easy to teach and lead poorly.

How true, how true. Getting to know the students, their interests, their strengths, their needs- this is a difficult task at best. And as a leader, the same is true with getting to know the educators you lead. I think this comes down to the question, "What is your vision?" Am I here to teach and learn? If so, this requires me to learn about my students in such a way that all my decisions revolve around what I know about them.

The technology did not make the educator fundamentally different. It amplifies good teaching just as it amplifies bad teaching.

In my role as an instructional technology specialist at the elementary schools, I have to stay focused on the goal, the vision, the mission. And I have to remind myself that encouraging teachers to use technology essentially for the sake of technology itself is far from my vision. It is easy to fall into that situation, because my passion is exploring the ways technology can be infused in learning environments. But, IT'S NOT ABOUT THE TECHNOLOGY. It's about learning. Period. So, technology in the hands of a bad teacher (or a bad leader) is terrifying, because it really will amplify all the wrong things (and encourage those not involved in "the conversations" to continue questioning the benefit of technology in education).

Become a reflective practitioner.

Last night, back at the hotel, Katie and I discussed our role, our philosophy, our vision. I think the two of us challenge each other to think outside of our comfort zone and continually evaluate what we do and why we do it. It isn't always easy, but we try to purposefully reflect on what we believe and what we should do to help students and teachers.

Our students deserve better. Our future requires better.

I often say that we are doing a disservice to our children when they walk in our door, unplug, disconnect, and stop talking. When four walls define the learning environment, we limit the possibilities. Our students do deserve better and I have been reminded at the conference that I need to spend some time talking with and listening to the students. I know they have a lot to say.

Great session to keep me thinking about school 2.0, what it means, and what my role really is. It was a great springboard to some thoughtful conversations.

Finding Voice

The School 2.0, Classroom 2.0 and Web 2.0 visions bring incredible possibilities, problems to be solved and open-ended discussions to be had. We are attempting to envision and embrace an open-ended future. We continue to talk about helping kids find their voices and authentic audiences, how that empowers and engages them. Learning to speak and converse with competency, confidence and appropriately using new and powerful tools is exciting, interesting. It will look very different from what we see now.
First steps in this direction require all of us to find our own voices and become actively engaged in conversations, to encourage and support teachers and administrators to recognize and participate in fundamental transformations and risk taking. Experiencing the community and converstation is essential to seeing, understanding and shaping the vision. Unless we ourselves are willing to be transformed, take risks and reach for an open-ended future we cannot expect to truly impact our students and the environment in which they learn.

School 2.0, Web 2.0, Creativity and Innovation

The themes for me today seemed to be:

• School 2.0/Web 2.0
  
• Creativity and Innovation

School 2.0/Web 2.0
Ok, so I just renamed this from just School 2.0 to School 2.0 and Web 2.0. I think in our district we really need to work on both. We are really moving forward with our use of Web 2.0 applications, but does that mean that we are really moving towards School 2.0? I don't think it does.

One of the most thought producing things from the School 2.0 sessions I went to was that we are using technology in our district mainly to make School 1.0 flashy. I really think that this is something we need to look at in our district. What does School 2.0 mean? Where do we want to go? I also truly believe that we need to involve all stakeholders in the conversation (students, teachers, admins, CO).

Creativity and Innovation

I was so impressed with the emphasis in the sessions and keynote today on using technology to enable us and our students to be more creative and innovative! I believe that this is SO important - this is what we need to be focusing in on. Our students need us to focus on this!

I loved also that maybe our role should be to INSPIRE! And to look for our Cathedrals. And also and maybe most importantly to be willing to FAIL!

I'm willing to fall down in my attempt to inspire!

Special thanks to Wesley Fryer for the great notes he took on his blog!

The ITM Flip Videoed Us!

Sorry the movie is green it just happened that way - all the videos from the Blogger's Cafe are turning out that way! See more of the videos from today here...
http://picasaweb.google.com/ncitsgirl/TuesdayNECCVideo

Conversation with Jeff Utecht

Jeff, the author of the blog The Thinking Stick, talked with us today about his school in Shanghai, China. His school does not focus on restricting sites or content from their students. Instead, they embrace the interests of the students, letting them check out a TV show they missed the night before on YouTube when they get to school. They have a school YouTube and Flickr account, posting pictures and student work online for families and others to see. Some things are posted as private, and parents and families can join the group to be able to view student work/pictures online. The focus is on the content, not about keeping kids away. Teachers have blogs, including group blogs to collaborate and share ideas. The focus isn't on fear, it is on learning. The biggest struggle they have is with China's internet restrictions. But learning is happening, and the tools are being embraced.