Tuesday, October 30, 2007

District Technology Fall Newsletter 2007

Check this link for the district technology newsletter.

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November a Giving Month

November for our family is a giving month. I would like to promote these giving ideas.

Click here to help feed the world. What happens at this website, you have a chance to click the click here to give free food button. Then 100% of the sponsor money goes to charity. How do they do this? Well, the site also promotes some sales of items that they are hoping you will stop by and purchase. However, the beginning for all of us can be click and someone will be getting some food.

The next giving idea
This one I particularly like. You can read about how this works in detail.  Basically,  I am going to purchase a laptop and when I do, a laptop will also be purchased and given to a student in a designated country.  I will have a laptop that my students can use and I will feel good about providing for another.

The final idea, not as magnanimous however, it is important to our community. Take part in this online survey as a student, parent or teacher. This survey gives our community a voice and some very good data which will go a long way to improving how we use technology in our district. Thanks for giving back.

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Monday, October 15, 2007

New Tools for Adding a blog post.

All I do it type my message and edit, then post.
Here is a great website. WOCSD District

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Big news October 15, 2007

You can take part in a FreeOnline workshop this week and next. K12OnlineConference
Take part in the national SpeakUP Netday survey. This gives our district great information about how we are using technology compared to our answers from last year and compared to the USA. It is very helpful in planning.
Click here SpeakupSurvey 2007
Our password is wocsd

Sunday, October 14, 2007


First snow of the Sugarloaf 07-08 Season! One more month until skiing!

ACTEM07 Will Richardson's Opening

This is the 20th year for the ACTEM technology educators workshop.

Listening to Will Richardson's keynote.

Technology:

changes in politics with YouTube, myspace, blogs as social networks

changes in journalism, the world has instant connection with their cell phone and cameras.

75% of media is shared peer to peer

Prince gave out 100,000 copies of his new CD.

Read Wikinomics!

Not about competition in business about collaboration and cooperation.

Looking at Clustr map, and why do all these folks come and visit Will's blog. All have some connection to the thoughts, the conversations and the thinking. Humbled by the fact that after 18 years in a high school, and then looking at the map, why?

The past 6 years of blogging has provided more growth, than all his course work in all the years.Kids are figuring this out. Look at the size of their classroom.

TakingITGlobal- online community for youth about world issues.

Fanfiction- you can add to the book.

Where kids write and have reviews and connections. doing this on their own. Kids make networks of people who are passionate about their favorite topic.

Who is teaching kids myspace?

Someone needs to model and teach myspace/online presence.

We need to build social spaces and model how to do this.

Clarance Fischer is building spaces for his students.

He has them start at Nata Village in South Africa, ravaged by AIDS and HIV. Clarance has his students blog about this. Nnow they are having students from Nata Village commenting on her blog, one of Clarance's students.

44645, text for google, way to get an answer to every question you need an answer to.

MIT Opencourseware- http://ocw.mit.edu

Need to find the information when you need it, need to know the ways to find the information, all information.

Go to Wikipedia and spend a couple hours digging deep.

How many teach Wikipedia? We have to think differently about what if we need kids to memorize the content.

If we as educators, can not find who owns a website and publishes it, then we are illiterate. We need to teach students how to do this, we need to do this.

How to get teachers to connect to experts from outside the the classroom.

Will's project with Secret Life Of Bees. http://weblogs.hcrhs.k12.nj.us/bees

Sue Monks Kidd, joined his clasroom blog and she answered questions. She taught Will's class more about SLB than he ever could.

YesIcanscience.com Great science project where kids interact with scientists.

Vicki's Flat Classroom Project, exceptional Flat Classroom project
.



Radio WillowWeb elementary kids podcasting the classroom news.

Our kids are not waiting for us to catch up. We need to go there with the students.

We need to learn to model the safe, ethical ways to use these tools.Most teachers haven't put the new tools in their own practice. Teachers are just digitizing the old worksheets and putting into the same ole same ole into technology. We need to support teachers in finding new ways for students to collaborate creatively and safely.

Monday, October 08, 2007

Getting Ready for K12online conference

Usually, when I go to a conference I blog my notes and reflections. Seems funny to be sitting in my home office, participating in an online keynote for the k12online conference.(Follow the previous link to learn how you can get credit for participating in this online conference.) However, since I am so used to backchanneling during a presentation, or blogging, I decided that this should be the same even though I am home and participating in this. Why am I not backchanneling or skype chatting while viewing this? (Although I am watching the twitter comments to see what others are saying about David's keynote.) Well, since it is an asynchronous presentation, others who are viewing this could be at a different spot in the presentation, so I will blog, and post and reflect with others later.This certainly captures David Warlick's whole premise, we need to create our own boundaries, our own rules. I can no longer just sit and git. I need to be actively participating and creating even when I am listening.
-are we are parent's future?
-are our students their parent's future, their teacher's future?
-loved David's son video, gotta know the territory!
-do we know our territory?
-we cut off our students when they enter our classrooms, we chop their tentacles, their network
-are we over-managing our environment in our classrooms, are we cutting our students off from their networks?
-ouch an encyclopedia with outdated material compared to wikipedia constant updates and  new content
-I am waiting for the little ladies! too!
-our info-savvy students,  are without the benefit of gravity!, they always have a neighborhood at their fingertips
-new information landscape-we educators need to learn how to harness this-in our content areas
-unpredictable future- we educators are preparing students for an unpredictable future, teach them to teach themselves
Oh, the little old lady!
Outtakes!
Thanks David for kicking off the k12online conference!
If you would like to view the keynote, follow the URL.
http://k12online.wm.edu/davidw.mp4


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