Edunology

Have you considered connecting your classroom with another classroom around the world? Are you studying communities, temperature, time, weather or holidays?  Can you think of some questions that your students could ask students in other locations to gather data on these topics?

What about literature. Would you be interested in discussing a book your class read with another class in the world? Wouldn’t it be interesting to get the perspective of the American Revolution from a school in England? Are you collecting data for a project? Could you ask questions of someone in a specific location to retrieve that data?Have you used Google Earth? Would it be engaging for your students to take a virtual field trip on Google Earth and then video conference with a school in that location?

There are endless possibilities with regards to video conferencing in the classroom. It has never been so easy either. Most schools around the world use a simple service called SKYPE. www.skype.com. Skype is a free video conferencing software that anyone can download. Once you create a username and download the software you are ready to connect to the world.

There is an online project called AROUND THE WORLD WITH 80 SCHOOLS that started this year. The goal of the project is that classes that chose to participate will attempt to connect their class with 80 other schools around the world. The project is very well organized.  There is a wiki that provides all of the information necessary to get started. There is a spreadsheet available online that provides all of the contact information for schools that have decided to take part in this.

What i like about this project is the simplicity of this. Although connecting with 80 schools  may seem overwhelming, they are recommending no more then 5 minute conversations. The wiki has a nice outline of ideas broken up by time. I copied some of it below.

Here is a suggested timeline:

• Hello (15 sec)
• Intro of School 1 (school/geographic location) (30 sec.)
• Intro of School 2 (school/geographic location) (30 sec.)
• School 1 shares (1 min)
• School 2 shares (1 min)
• Data collection Question (30 sec.)
• Goodbye (15 sec)

Take some time and read through the WIKI. There is some great information on there. If you are interested in starting to video conference in your classroom please let me know. I will be happy to assist the entire way through.
Enjoy!

Around the World with 80 Schools  wiki ——aroundtheworldwith80schools – home.

Have you ever heard of a Glog? Would you like to learn how to take a traditional project like a poster and create a 21^st century, online version of one? Do you think your students would be interested in learning how to create an online poster with text, images, video clips, sound, graphics and design features? Would this type of assessment foster creativity, engage students in the learning process, and develop technology literacy skills?

If this sounds interesting to you then you should take a look at Glogster Edu. A glog is a 21st century poster. A Glog is an online poster that can contain photographs, images, graphics, video files, sound files and text.  Glogs allow you to add hyperlinks to other websites.

Glogster is an exciting and engaging tool for students. Glogster takes the traditional process of creating posters and makes it more interactive, dynamic, creative, and in tune with 21st century expectations.

I will be offering a workshop on a web 2.0 tool that provides the opportunities listed above. To learn more about it and to register please follow the link below.

http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0Aaa0uxFLu14JZGZzd2JrM21fMTZnYm53M2dnNw&hl=en

If you want to jump right in and start exploring then please visit the Glogster EDU home page at http://edu.glogster.com.

IMPORTANT: Currently a teacher who registers with Glogster EDU can create up to 200 student accounts. This will be changing to 100 starting March 1. Register now to lock in 200 accounts before March 1.

Stay tuned for how to documents and instructional screencasts.

Enjoy!

Jenuine Tech has opened up a new online project called “Everyone Counts“ The theme of the project is the US Census that will be happening this year. She has setup a website with information regarding the project. There are two question sheets that can be used as well as a number of extension activities. This seems like a great project to work on with your class. I have a few ideas regarding extension activities as well. Here is the link to the project information and registration info. I listed some extension activities that I thought were interesting.
http://www.jenuinetech.com/Projects/ec20/welcome.html

• Global Collaboration – We are starting to make a number of connections with schools in the US and overseas for video conferencing and collaboration. A comparison of census data that the students collect would be an interesting idea. I can help make the connection with another class. Jen also offers the opportunity to find another class through her Ning site.
• Math – The collection of census data is a great way to incorporate MS Excel into your curriculum. Students can add the data to a spreadsheet and create graphs to display and interpret the results
• Social Studies / Geography -After reviewing census data for locations students can take a trip on Google Earth to visit these locations. They can identify the type of community and take note of the physical characteristics of each location in relation to the census data (i.e suburban, vs. rural, vs. urban communities)
• This site has some ideas for teaching about the census in your classroom.   http://www.census.gov/schools

As always I am available to assist with and plan all stages of such a project! I would also appreciate it if you would share any additional ideas you have to add to this project.

I came across this great diagram to distribute to students.  It is a guide for how to conduct classroom conversations for students. It is based on a technique called Accountable Talk. I read about this resource on the following blog posting.

Class Discussion Guidelines

Enjoy!

The students in Briggs, Cozy Lake, and Milton Schools have been producing digital stories using MS Photostory 3. In Briggs School all of the second grade students took part in an online project called “Where the Wild Things Went” You can view their completed stories on their new school blog which can be found here.

Mrs. Caraturo’s class in Cozy Lake School created digital stories.  During the month of October, students in Mrs. Caraturo’s class were asked to choose a newly fallen leaf.  Students then illustrated a picture and wrote a story about the journey their leaf took after it fell from its tree.  The boys and girls are very excited to have published their first digital story and to share it with their family and friends. Mrs. Caraturo’s class stories are published here. Please contact her for the password to view the stories if you are interested.

  The students in Mrs. Evans Kindergarten class, in Milton School,  created digital stories describing their favorite animal at Space Farms Zoo.   Each student drew a picture of an animal and then narrated their picture. We used a digital camera and Microsoft Photostory 3 to complete the project. You can view their stories here.

To learn more about digital storytelling click here.

Enjoy!

There is a new project available for grades Prek to 6 students.  It was created by Jennifer Wagner. Here is a blurb from her site:

Jennifer Wagner, creator of JenuineTech.com, has been successfully encouraging teachers since 1999 to use technology seamlessly in their PreK-6 classrooms. Using the tools of the Internet (Web 2.0), Jennifer will help you understand how technology will help you make the most of your time in a variety of ways. Winning numerous awards for her creative ways in encouraging teachers to collaborate, her teaching style is very user friendly, creative, and personable.

THE PROJECT

Join in the fun as we learn about
extending a story, endangered animals, and verbs!

The project has three ideas that teachers could take part in with their students. The topics involve extending a story, endangered animals and verbs. As with  most of Jenn’s projects there is a focus on creativity and innovation as well as collaboration. These are key skills for the 21st century.  If you are interested in learning more about this project please follow the link below.

http://www.jenuinetech.com/Projects/wtwta/index.htm

Enjoy!