Learning At the LRC

The Brain on Vidoe Games

2012-03-09T06:48:00.001-08:00

I am a proponent of using video games in teaching and learning. I use them with my students and my own children are avid gamers. That said I recognise that I there are various effects, both positive and negative that these types of games can have on the human brain. It is important for everyone, parent, teacher and child, to be aware of these effects. Below you will find an infographic from Educational Technology and Mobile Learning blog which outlines some of the effects of video games on the human brain.

Online Gaming

2012-02-25T11:14:00.001-08:00

Our kids have grown up with video games that are far more complex than those we were familiar with as children. They love games and understand online gaming environments. It makes sense to get creative and use games to help students learn important skills.

I wasn't always a proponent of gaming, in fact it has taken me quite a few years to really understand the positive impact that gaming can have on student learning. This changed when I started an after school WoW club. (There are other elements to this club besides the game, such as reading, reflecting and blogging.) It has proven to be a powerful experience for both myself and my students. Upon reflection of the work they have done in in WoW and our journey together (I play along with them), I am impressed at what we have accomplished.

By the end of our first lesson, we were all teaching, supporting and sharing our experiences, guiding each other, as we engaged in discovery through exploration and role play. Students began guiding their own learning, through discussions and quests with others in our class and other players in the game. They used all the resources at their disposal, game wikis, YouTube tutorials and more, without prompting, and became part of a larger learning community as they sought out connections with others. This in itself is a huge leap forward. The kids were driving their learning experiences, determining their own paths, resourcing their support and extension and building learning networks.

There is a lot learning that goes on in an online game. I made a point of taking a few minutes each week to reflect on my own learning experiences. I wanted to better understand what learning processes the students were going through during those experiences. They were reading, following instructions, building strategies, seeking solutions, collaborating with others, and learning from mistakes, while utilising online safety strategies. Aren't these skills we want to help our students develop?

The strategies the students developed throughout their journeys were often a result of the conditions and obstacles they encountered. Their quests, dungeons and group work, required not only travel strategies, but strategies to aid them in coping with other adversities along the route, recognition of obstacles, their locations and how best to deal with them. They had to employ good communication, netiquette and internet safety skills in dealing with other players within the game, while traveling and participating in team based activities. Students had to use their number skills to collect and trade goods, work with experience points while finding ways to level up as well as deal with training requirements. In-world reading was a major focus of the game, as students read through quest descriptions and followed instructions. Students applied their mapping and compass skills, determined routes and means of transportation, depending on topography. These were not skills directly taught in the club, instead students were supported in navigating the virtual world.

It is an eye opening experience for a teacher, who has spent many years, devoted to planning, resourcing and teaching lessons, to realise that with the right venue, students are capable of and motivated to drive their own learning in these ways. I think it only reconfirms that we need to get more creative and take risks, offer more options, give the kids a say, loosen up the reigns a bit, and embrace our roles as facilitators of learning.

The February Newsletter is Out!

2012-02-22T13:46:00.000-08:00

Please click on the image below to access the full newsletter. We hope you enjoy it. We would love to hear back from you, so please take a minute to write us a comment.

Mrs. Garcia

Research Skills-No Excuses

2012-02-16T12:09:00.000-08:00

Research skills can be tricky to teach. When you sit down to think about it, the term research skills is a bit of an umbrella, encompassing so many important skills.

When considering the research process, strategies and tools for searching come to mind. I have been teaching this for 4 years, but still wonder how I can better teach kids to be effective and efficient seekers of information. What strategies can we use and what tools are available? Throughout this stage of the process determining the quality, relevance and reliability and fairness of sources (see filter bubbles) and is also imperative. Evaluation skills are brought into the mix.

It is important that students learn how to scan, identify important information and separate it from that which is not, read for understanding and take notes on the information they have found (This in itself is a huge skill to learn.) Before any of this takes place however, students must learn how to structure their research questions, and plan their ideas, so outlining skills need to be taught.

All of this must happen in order for students to use their findings to create something through which to share their understanding. The type of project undertaken will affect the structure and content they will use. But we are not done yet. Students must also be taught to reference their work and somewhere along the line, students must be given the opportunity to reflect on their findings, writing and final project.

It is too late to begin this process in high school. It needs to start much lower down, in elementary school, and through meaningful experiences, preferably before bad habits develop. It needs to be planned for with care and a progression determined. Students won't learn all of these skills in isolation, they should be taught across subjects (where applicable) as part of any research task they undertake. They won't learn them all on their own and may have trouble seeing their worth unless otherwise pointed out to them, strategies taught and plenty of relevant practice provided.

We teach searching skills and evaluation skills, and help equip students with some of the best tools available to do so. We teach them how to take notes and share their findings and ideas with others using Twitter and Diigo. We teach them a great variety of ways in which they can publish and share their work and also focus on delivery to a group. I think about all that we do, and when it is done, knowing how much goes into it, recognising the quality of the work we do and yet I know we don't have it right yet. I have never been as convinced as I am right now that the teaching of research skills needs to begin prior to middle school.

Something happened this past week that had never happened before. I was teaching 6th grade how to use smart searching tools and strategies, evaluate websites and share their sources and annotations socially through Diigo. This was the first time we did this quite so thoroughly with 6th grade and I was blown away. Where the older grades are accepting and basically put up with it prior to many of them reverting back to their old habits, 6th grade embraces this type of learning, they hunger to try things out and make a huge effort to get the work done, and even take on additional work outside of class time that wasn't required of them.

We are getting closer, 6th grade is the right grade to go full throttle with this, but wouldn't it have been even more powerful if the groundwork were already in place? There would be less direct teaching of research skills and more guided application. This should be an expectation in the 21st century. There are no acceptable excuses for not teaching students to be information literate and doing so not only from the middle years on but from an earlier age.

Here are some links to my favourite tools and resources for teaching these skills.

Diigo-Social bookmarking, annotations and more.
Twitter and Today's Meet-Microblogging Platforms for sharing succinct nuggets of information
EasyBib-for citing work.
21st Century Information Fluency- for teaching searching skills and website evaluation
May Favourite Hoax Sites-Buy Dehydrated Water, Dog Island, The Northwest Tree Ocotpus, and anything http://zapatopi.net/. You can find plenty more here and here to choose from.
The Big Six-Framework for teaching and learning research
BrainPop Online Sources(login required)
BrainPop Internet Search (login required)

Augmented Reality and SketchUp

2012-02-09T13:49:00.000-08:00

I am in SketchUp mode right now, as we are working with the program in our 8th grade lessons. The students have been given a special task. They are to create a room based on a descriptive piece they wrote in English lessons, entitled a Character's Mind as a Room.

It's the second time we have done this project in two years the culminating activity for which, is to create a SketchUp video of the models. Yesterday the plans changed a bit something new and exciting appeared on the horizon. I came across a slide share presentation posted by Martin Burrett on augmented reality. The presentation lead me to AR-Media's cool plugin for Google SketchUp. I needed to check this out, one because I have never really investigated augmented reality (except for the time I tried to get it to work in Zooburst, failed and gave up...[Note to self: go back and try this again]), but more importantly because it would be an exciting activity to do with our kids when they complete the unit. They could even screencast themselves manipulating their models.

All anyone needs to do is to download the free plugin from AR-Media then build or open an existing model. A working webcam is a must, most computers come with built in cameras today, as is a print off the marker from the AR-media folder in your computer library.

To get a better idea, watch the very short inexpert video demonstration I put together. There are plenty more of these peruse, including one produced by In Globe Technologies, which demonstrates layers management, real time sections and more.

The January Newsletter is Out!

2012-01-25T12:40:00.001-08:00

Here is our January Newsletter. Do have a read when you get a moment and feel free to comment back to us on this blog.

This is a snapshot. Please click here to read it online.

When Glitches Lead to Gain

2012-01-17T06:48:00.000-08:00

http://www.islabit.com/6789/corriendo-world-of-warcraft-en-un-iphone.html http://otrapartida.com/ya-a-la-venta-la-version-completa-de-minecraft/10776/

Each Monday our World of Warcraft group meets to discuss our readings, blog posts and work together in-world. Unfortunately yesterday afternoon, WoW was experiencing difficulties with user log-ins and after a few tries we gave up. The kids then resorted to their next favourite game, Minecraft and a discussion soon began. Some of the students had found out on Twitter that on the 18th (tomorrow) Minecraft might be allow online users to play the complete game for free. They were very excited about this, and since I don't play Minecraft and couldn't access my WoW account, I decided to delve into it further.

It turns out that many online services have planned activities, amongst these "blackouts" to protest SOPA. We weren't terribly familiar with what that was, so we dug further and found out that it is a piece of US legislation that is meant to protect against online piracy- called the Stop Online Piracy Act. There is a great deal of public opposition to SOPA and as a result many online services have planned a blackout.

http://ml109.deviantart.com/art/STOP-SOPA-279366889

What is your Opinion on SOPA?

The kids, our learners of the remix generation, were genuinely interested in what SOPA was and why Wikipedia, Minecraft and many others were so unhappy with it that they would go to these measures. I don't think I have ever had 6th graders ask me to send them news reports before. Yesterday after a brief discussion, many of them requested that I forward on the information to them.

The Fullfillment of a New Comment!

2012-01-12T12:32:00.001-08:00

It is always very exciting to receive feedback on published work. It generates a feeling of pride, boosts confidence and helps you to realise that you can make a contribution regardless of your age.

Today I received a notification that one of the student videos received a comment.

Our novice WoWers were able to help someone with the game in their very first video tutorial.

"gaqol29 has made a comment on Darnassus- transportation for Night Elves.mov: thanks alot this really helped me to get out of the elf world"

Please do take a moment to comment on our WoW blog when you get a chance. The students are submitting their first homework assignments based on the readings and the game this week.

Our Trilingual Radio

2011-12-13T14:35:00.000-08:00

A few months ago the Spanish teachers approached me about helping them set up a trilingual radio show, that would have students reporting on different aspects of school and community life several times a month. The students and teachers worked very hard to prepare the first episode, while I set up our Podbean account and our iTunes channel. This was all much easier than I expected, painless really and very fulfilling. We now have our introductory podcast as well as the first student episode in Spanish and French available on our channel for download and subscription! Do have a listen in, if you get a chance.

Flipping the Learning-Creating Videos in WoW

2011-12-13T14:26:00.000-08:00

Our club met up again yesterday, but a lot has happened in the course of this last week. The students have been working at their quests every chance they get and some are now at level 20! I won't mention what level I am at. They have learned how to get around, fly on griffins, take trains and boats, and use tunnels. They are way ahead of me now. Does that worry me? Not a bit, it is exactly what I hoped would happen. My students are furious and relentless about their WoW work.

So far we have only begun to use the blog. The skill is new to most of them and I want to make sure they are comfortable with it before introducing the readings and reflections. Soon after our first lesson, I realised that my carefully planned unit would need a major revamp. They were way past much of what I had planned for them. If only they were that way about all their school work....I am pleased to mention that the directed teaching has been minimal and I haven't spent hours putting online tutorials together either. They have been directing their own learning with very little support and sharing new skills with the group.

It is for this reason I thought it only fit to have them share some of their discoveries with us by recording using the WoW Mac Options. We could have gone further, narrated the vids, rendered them after careful editing in iMovie, or done screencasts with Quicktime or Screencast-o-matic, but all except one (which was done as 4 separate vids) are unedited footage. The learning has flipped with no upset to those involved. My students are now my WoW teachers and I retain my position as facilitator, the setter of assignments, readings etc...How I envy the speed with which they learn....again if only they could do that, or feel motivated to do so in all their regular lessons.

Did I mention a 12th grader asked to come on board (a level 84 12th grader!!!)? We now have an expert in the midst, which brings me back to my earlier statement, something about students as teachers. The roles have certainly flipped, leaving me free to learn alongside them, to learn from them and facilitate the journey ahead.

Our First WoW Meetup

2011-12-05T17:59:00.001-08:00

We had our first World of Warcraft Meetup today! This was a very exciting first step for us. The kids couldn't be more excited and to be quite honest nor could the teachers. Please read more about it on our WoW Blog.

The November LRC Newsletter is Out!

2011-11-30T14:30:00.001-08:00

Please take a look at the November Newsletter to find out more about what is happening at the LRC.We hope you enjoy it and would love to hear back from you, so please feel free to leave us a comment or two below.

The image below is only a preview. Please click here to download the complete newsletter.

Screencast Tutorials

2011-11-22T07:27:00.001-08:00

Our 6th and 8th grade students have created some exciting screencast tutorials in ICT lessons. In these tutorials the students teach many different technology skills that they have learned over the past few months and even years. We have begun publishing them on our LRCABC Youtube Channel for the world to enjoy and learn from and hope you will find a few minutes to browse through the collection. Who knows, you may even learn something new!

iPads

2011-11-16T05:45:00.001-08:00

This post has a simple title, it needs little else apart from that and the presentation I am sharing within. I recently put this together for a presentation I did on why we should have iPads in our school.

I fell in love with the iPad as a personal device quite soon after purchasing one this past summer, since then it has opened my eyes to the huge range of possibilities for its use in education, some of which I have shared below.

Enjoy!

Why Not Use Cell Phones in Lessons?

2011-11-15T07:19:00.001-08:00

Cell phones can be so much more than we tend to give them credit for. If you think about it, how do kids use them most as phones? One might argue that the phone call function is perhaps one of the less used on most student cell phones. Cell phones are mini video and audio recorders, digital cameras, devices for browsing, accessing and creating content for projects and ultimately for the web.

Last year we used cell phones in a few lessons as response devices, allowing students to connect up to teacher created surveys and view the results in real time. This year many students used them to record their raps durin the rainy week, their talking head videos for English class as well as video for the creative carrousel.

Cell phones are powerful tools, most students have them and know how to use them, so the question is, why not use them in lessons when it makes sense to do so.

I am interested in gaining some insight on this from the student perspective and have created a survey for them to fill in. It is anonymous and only ABC community members can access it. I have embedded a copy below and included a screen shot of it for those of you who are not immediate members of the ABC Community. I would really welcome any comments and/or questions you may have on this. Please do use the comment option in this blog to respond.

Screen Shot of the Survey

Survey

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Across Borders

2011-11-11T16:35:00.001-08:00

My good friend Lisette Casey and I will be presenting our Across Borders project at the Global Education Conference this coming week.

Here is a sneak peak of our session.

Across Borders: A Day in Our Lives

Across Borders: Students from two hemispheres working together, getting to know each other and learning that they are not that different from each other after all.

If you haven't yet signed up for the conference yet click here and join in on the smorgasbord of high energy, interactive learning on offer. Oh and if that weren't enough, it is completely free!

Teaching Reading through Gaming and Teamwork

2011-11-11T16:04:00.001-08:00

For several years now, I have been hearing stories about how educators use World of Warcraft for teaching and learning. Recently I decided it was time to take the plunge and give it a try. I was fortunate enough to attend ISTE 2010 where I made a Twitter connection that would prove very inspirational.

The Inspiration for my initial work with WoW came from the fantastic work done by WoW in Schools. If you have ever wanted to know more about how teachers are using WoW to teach students important 21st century skills, this is the place to go.

Anyhow, I need a plan that accounted for several things, the purpose or rationale for using WoW with our students (below), the skills I wanted to teach, the resources we would use, and of course the role of parents in all of this.

The purpose of the unit I came up with is to engage students in reading activities which that draw parallels between online gaming activities and involve an element of teamwork in a virtual world. Through quests, students interact with other players, reflect on their experiences in written form as well as through discussion drawing parallels between their quests and other experiences in-world and their readings. Each of the 10 lessons will include a blog post which will reflect on different aspects of the readings and student gaming experiences.

In planning the unit, I decided to focus on one of our school's Traits and Values, TEAMWORK. It seemed to me that a MMOG was a great way to focus on it. I chose a graphic novel to be the basis of our reading work, The Arctic Incident. Adapted by Eoin Colfer Andrew Donkin (Artemis Fowl Graphic Novel), and downloaded the trial version of WoW. I ordered 10 copies of the graphic novel, wrote a carefully worded letter for our parents, which explains the learning intentions, created a brief quest example video, and approached my school Admin team with a proposal to discuss. At the same time I began preparing lessons, each of which focuses on the following areas: A reading, A game challenge or activity,a discussion and a blog post, My next step was to create a response blog.

In about 2 weeks time I will be in a position to run an information session for the kids, send the letters home to parents and see what responses I can collect.

I haven't been this excited about a new project in a while, or at least a month or two anyway.

Wish me luck!

The October Newsletter is Out!

2011-10-26T11:49:00.001-07:00

Please click on the image below to open up the October LRC Newsletter. We hope you enjoy it.

Click here to download the newsletter.

8th Grade Book Trailers

2011-10-09T06:35:00.001-07:00

The 8th Grade created video book trailers on a book of their choices which they planned and produced in groups. This was a 6 week process involving 18 lessons of ICT. The 8th grade students are already quite skilled at video production, so this was an opportunity for them to branch out a bit and take on a video genre they were unfamiliar with. In preparing for the project, students learned about shots, angles and camera movement. They learned that trailers are generally fast paced,short in duration and involve a variety of shots and angles as well as scene changes. Through the project the 8th grade students were able to fine tune their video editing skills as well as try out a great many new techniques incorporating special effects and using the green screen. These trailers can be found on the LRC YouTube Channel as well as on this page. We hope you enjoy them!

7th Grade Website Evaluation

2011-10-08T09:20:00.000-07:00

The 7th grade students are learning how to evaluate websites in ICT lesson. In doing so they look at the following areas: source, affiliation/bias/purpose, content and currency. They recorded their findings in a private chatroom using Today's Meet. This can be a difficult task for students, many of whom are not used to questioning content found online. These students are now well on their way to becoming effective and efficient researchers.

Steve Jobs-A Tribute

2011-10-06T06:40:00.001-07:00

Steve Jobs passed away yesterday from pancreatic cancer. If you would like to learn more about this amazing thinker, whose ideas revolutionized the computer industry, take a look at the Steve Jobs A Master Thinker Tribute on Scoop.it.

Do also have a look at his Stanford Speech. It is quite inspirational.

2011-09-29T16:34:00.000-07:00

The September LRC Newsletter is out. Read it online here.

Lrc Newsletter 1 Sept 2011 Upload

Steve Hargadon: Live Interview Thursday Sept. 29th on "iPads in th...

2011-09-29T07:56:00.000-07:00

Steve Hargadon: Live Interview Thursday Sept. 29th on "iPads in th...: Working in conjunction with the Michigan Department of Education and Emmy Award Winning Director, Allyson Rockwell, the Mason-Lake and Ocean...

The Future of Learning

2011-09-29T06:29:00.000-07:00

I came across this great presentation by Steve Wheeler at the University of Plymouth on the future of education this morning, as I was trawling through my scoop.it updates.

It's interesting to see how many new technologies were met with resistance and are either still going strong in some form or other, or have become a thing of the past only after many years of being the "new tools". What is really powerful is the concept of digital evolution as opposed to digital revolution, the idea of merging virtual and real worlds. If you look at Steve's 6 trends for a the digital age, it becomes obvious that we are smack in the midst of this particular merger.

New Technologies and the Future of Learning

View more presentations from Steve Wheeler

Theatre Week

2011-09-26T20:04:00.000-07:00

This Week is Theatre Week in the Secondary School. Plenty of theatre related activities are taking place in the different subjects, whilst at the LRC a special set of workshops have begun.

The LRC Coordinator and Digital Media Artist have prepared 6 after school sessions, over the course of 2 weeks, aimed at teaching students how to make foam puppets. This activity will end with a series of short puppet shows performed by the students on the last day.

Sessions take place from 2:00-3:00 on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Students can sign up using the Google Form in their email inbox.

Take a minute to view our Theatre Week Puppet Project Video.

The New LRC Blog

2011-09-26T20:03:00.000-07:00

There are many ways to find out what is going on at the LRC. You can "like" us in Facebook, Follow us on Twitter, view the website, and view LRC Videos and photos on YouTube and Flickr.
This school year the LRC has launched this new blog which will bring all of these networks together in one place, as well as provide a venue for short informative updates, as well as the LRC Newsletter to be uploaded each month for your viewing pleasure.
It is our sincerest hope that you will enjoy our new blog, use it to keep up on the latest in regards to the LRC and feel free to communicate with us through it and our other social networks linked to within.
Here's to the start of a new exciting school year full of innovation in learning.

Post to Blog

2011-09-07T11:26:00.000-07:00

It's been a while. There has been so much going on with the start of the new school year, much of it would make for interesting posts, but it has all been so time consuming (and I mean that in a good way), that posting has not been an option. This of course generated an ongoing feeling of guilt. I am very pleased that I have found one small way of alleviating some of this guilt. It kind of dropped into my inbox this morning, as I was perusing my Diigo Group updates. One of the blog posts I encountered had been auto-posted directly from Diigo. I spend a great deal of time going through links and posting to various Diigo groups, so when I saw this I had to wonder, why I didn't know about this option.

Well I know about it now and have added it to some of my Diigo groups. At great risk to over posting (can you say that?) in my blog many of the gems that I come across each day will now appear here.

ImageChef

2011-07-15T10:50:00.000-07:00

I love word clouds, WordItOut (which allows you to link tags/words), Tagxedo(which also generates shape clouds) and Wordle(which lets you design colour schemes) to name a few, but I had forgotten about ImageChef until today when I stumbled upon it again. ImageChef allows users to create word clouds in various shapes including their own initials, using different colours and backgrounds, much like other applications. While it limits users to only two colours, one for words and one for the background, the initials options struck me as interesting. I could see it being used in Life Skills for example with students brainstorming words that describe themselves or a friend and creating a cloud in the form of their initials to match.

The beauty of the system is that once the cloud is created it can be embeded! I love embed code and plan on using ImageChef this coming school year with students when working on their digital portfolios, having them embed their personal word clouds in their wikis or Google Sites.

Here is one I did on my reflexions from ISTE 2011.

Storymaker

2011-07-15T10:23:00.000-07:00

I am always on the lookout for new digital storytelling resources. There are so many different options out there. Two web applications that we use are Kerpoof with our younger students to create storybooks and ToonDoo with the older students to create cartoon strips. Today I came across StoryMaker while perusing my Diigo notifications. It may not be new but it is one I have not seen before. It is certainly fun to use, with its predetermined drag and drop characters, scenes and props. Dialogue as well as a written story are both possible. The final product can be printed off or downloaded as a pdf. Unfortunately I couldn't find embed code for the storybook, which would have made it a real contender for the work we do with the younger students. One way around this would be to upload it to Google docs or scribd to generate the appropriate code. On a positive note, an account is not required to use the application and download books, making it an easy tool to use with any class.

Here are a couple of pages from my first book.

Braindump #2

2011-06-30T07:26:00.000-07:00

Away from ISTE even one day later, I worry quite a bit about forgetting things that caught my attention at the conference. This list is a follow up to the previous post with those things that I thought important to investigate further. It is a do list of sorts.

*Reminder to self about the number of cards from people I met, who expressed an interest in partnering up our students. These need be organised and followed up on, but not until August.

Interesting Ideas
I have used Voicethread a few times with students and have known about it for ages, but felt I needed a bit of a refresher and some inspiration. The session I attended was fine, not terribly challenging, but it gave me a few more ideas for uses I had not thought of. Certainly book talks are high on our lists of priorities this year and Voicethread is a good vehicle for this as it allows for image/video uploads as well as collaboration and discussion. It can be used for debates as well, between members of a class, different classes or even different schools. A follow me story could be created with each person or team adding their image/s and chapters to it. There are plenty more uses for it, but these are some that stood out for me.

Things I Missed
One issue with an event as big as ISTE is that you can't get to every presentation you'd like to. I remember sitting in perfectly good presentations, while TweetDeck spurted tweet after tweet at a rate of 2 per second, praising the joy and conversation of other presentations. This leads me to another job for the list, to browse through ISTE Unplugged.

High Impact
I almost missed Alan November's session on Empathy: The 21st Century Skill. It reminded me of things I knew and had pushed to one side, things I should be doing, and it put me to shame. This was a good thing however, as Alan talked to us about searching using site: and country codes as well as using twitter hashtags to search with in order to ensure kids are getting the full picture, understand issues from many perspectives ... I began kicking myself. I hadn't done this with my 7th grades during the Egyptian crisis project we did. Our work seems so superficial in comparison, and it would have been a perfect unit in which to incorporate such important skills. I haven't gotten over it and that's a good thing. It means I will do better next time.

This lead me to a very important realisation. I have used Twitter a lot for years and even taught kids to use it to record their own research in tweet format, but I have never had the kids use it to search empathetically, to pop that search bubble that we have become encased in and find out what is really going on from all sides. Wasn't Twitter instrumental in getting ideas, experiences and news out during the Egyptian crisis...yet that wealth of information remained untapped for my students....Kick, kick, kick.,..Twitter is one of the best research tools around for getting all sides of the stories straight from those who are affected, directly involved and on the front line and at the very least for accessing media sources from around the world. When combined with smart searching using country codes and specific domains you can't go wrong, you will get the full picture.

Next Steps but Not Yet
Finally, one last thing that I can't let slip by is all the talk and excitement about iPads. They have certainly emerged as a must have for schools, There is so much that can be done with such a portable yet complete device. Hundreds of apps aside, I saw people using their ipads in the most sensible and interesting of ways, capturing images, creating animations and other digital stories, sharing ideas, communicating with each other and much, much more. There is one dark side however, that I was made aware of. Google Docs doesn't work properly on the iPad yet. No worries however, we have a whole school year to see if they sort out the issue or not.

ISTE Inspiration and Possibilities so Far- List 1

2011-06-28T09:04:00.000-07:00

What I love about ISTE
I love interacting and sharing ideas with people at sessions and the playgrounds!!!! I could do that all day long!

I love the inspiration I receive, the renewing of faith in what we are all trying to do and that little push that takes me into my zpd once again.

I am fascinated by the sheer enormity of such and event. The number of choices in sessions that are available to participate in and attend.

Two days into the conference and what have I taken away? I have a long list of todos at this point which I am sure to add to....

My List of Todos so Far
I Must:
-Use screen-o-matic.com instead of jing for student produced tutorials on small snapshot skills and make it a regular activity in and out of class. No account is needed, it is immediate and why not have their watermark on our vids...they provided the service and for free!

-Create student friendly rubrics for all units of study and instead of hitting them with the whole rubric, give them access to the whole thing and then take it in small steps, one row or so at a time depending on the week's learning objectives.

-Try a "get to know you" activity where kids share who they are with a mashup of video and photos. Note to self: think very carefully about the parking for this.

-Share Google Patents and Google Product searches with the Business and Economics teachers.

-Figure out how to make flubaroo work with Google forms and spreadsheets.

-Collect as much as possible on iPads in schools, App collections and follow the blogs of teachers implementing them. We should really be going down this road next school year once some of the bugs are fixed with Google Docs and I mean in both Primary and Secondary.

-Discuss using Amazon reviews with Languages to encourage student book review writing.

Things that Really Caught My Eye and have Added to Diigo( need further investigation)

From the Iste Google session by Howie DiBlasi

There was a lot more than this in the session, but those applications I was more familiar with. These are the ones that stood out for me:

Google transliteration:

Use google's transliteration instead of google translate,

set language preferences under Advanced Search

Wordlens of ripped and iphone, point at sign and it will translate it to your language.

Google App Creator

http://appinventor.googlelabs.com/about/

Shapeways

sell 3d models in sketchup online(bookmark this one)

factbites.com encyclopedias and information

quintura generates a word cloud of results based on search criteria.

Clusty groups or clusters information that is related.

duck duck go

Flying through the crusades-google earth wiki lessons.

http://kthorne.pbworks.com/w/page/6848602/Flying-Through-the-Crusades

5o things to do with google maps mashup

http://googlemapsmania.blogspot.com/2006/12/50-things-to-do-with-google-maps.html

google patents

google products product comparisons

http://www.google.com/prdhp

ocarina App

play flute with ipod and iphone

School Year 2010/11

2011-06-10T12:01:00.000-07:00

SY10/11 has been one of great success and forward momentum for the LRC and as a result, the ABC.

School year 10/11 was the first in which the LRC was able to link up teaching and learning on a larger scale with teachers and students in other schools and move forward with some exciting collaborative digital projects. There are plans for this to continue as well as to broaden the scope during the upcoming school year.

It was a year of consolidation in many ways. Students and some staff members who for several years had been working towards a comfort level with certain digital tools attained their goals this past year and are ready for next steps, building upon these skills and making further connections. It is safe to say that most students in KS3 are very comfortable with the great array of digital learning tools that they have been taught with or taught to use over the last 3 years. The current 6th grade after just one year in Secondary, is about to move up to 7th grade with the strongest of foundations of any year group, with a comfort level superior to even that of some 8th grade students, in web fluency and the use of digital media tools.

Staff members also demonstrated a greater willingness and confidence in seeking out and taking on digital projects as well as using the tools themselves. As a result there have been less requests for support than in prior years. Projects which were new to departments in the last two years have become an expected component of the curriculum and are now planned for on a yearly basis. Students and staff are also more comfortable with the ways of working in the LRC. Teachers regularly bringing classes down to read as well as work on various projects and students frequently book the resources at breaks and after school for their school work.

The ABC is now very much on the world map of forward thinking schools working with digital media. Not only are our student projects promoted through the various web presences that are managed by the LRC, in some cases they are the result of work with teachers and students in other countries. Some of the most successful work has been and will continue to be shared with educators from around the world through the various communication tools as well as through conference presentations. This too can be said of the Library specific work at the LRC and the promotion of special events, which are carefully documented and shared with the world through the same channels as well as local and international Library conferences, the blogs and other social networks of the LRC Staff members.

Cross curricular work in the LRC with departments (which is is outlined on the Vertical Schemes Site)has been further consolidated and enhanced
this year through the fine tuning of existing projects and the addition of new ones. These projects not only support and extend teaching and learning in other subjects and teach students new digital skills, but also serve to strengthen the relevance of these experiences and new skills building on those already acquired, which can be applied across a range of learning situations.

The LRC strives to enrich student life in many ways. This year it has played an even greater role in events and theme weeks, offering additional tours, interactive displays and workshops. Teachers and students from both Secondary and Primary made good use of these displays and workshops. LRC staff members also worked in unison with the Music department in organising and running Lunch on the Lawn.

The addition of the Digital Media Artist this school year proved to be very successful. Students and staff alike have gained so much from the support, new ideas and training they have received. The digital media resources and equipment collection has grown substantially this year and been well used throughout the school year. Perhaps one of the most exciting additions to the collection is the new green screen, which has been used by many students across the school to create interesting digital video projects. It is vital that the school continue to support learning by providing innovative experiences and support as well as appropriate and cutting edge equipment and resources.

The LRC book and magazine collection is well used by students and staff for reading both in and out of lessons. This past school year, more teachers have begun bringing their classes down for independent reading activities. One priority this school year was to build up the collection of Spanish language fiction books while at the same time updating English language fiction. This was possible in part due to the Scholastic book fair and book orders, as well as a substantial Spanish fiction book order. Spanish remains the focus for next year along with French and the addition of the newest titles in print and audio for the English fiction collection.

In summation, the year has been one of consolidation in some respects but also one of expansion in project work, themes, digital skills and resources. For the reasons mentioned in this report it has been the most successful year so far, not one immune to issues and obstacles, but one in which it was possible to further learning and move forward. None of this would have been possible without the constant support of school leaders, the enthusiasm of its students and teachers and the dedication, creativity and purpose of the LRC members of staff.

Blackberries and School-Good things Come to Those Who Wait!

2011-05-27T08:26:00.000-07:00

A year ago I tried to get my then 8th grade students to use mobile phones to record video for their trailers. It never took off for various reasons and I chalked it up as a failed initiative. A few months back I tried to bring BlackBerry Smartphones into my teaching and learning again, by creating little quizzes and surveys online and posting QR codes on my sites and within my online lessons. It worked but it was a bit time consuming and when I weighed the impact against the effort, while factoring in the number of students with access to data plans, I desisted and decided it would need further thought. It was a bit cowardly to put it off rather than persevere and rethink it at the time, but the race to the end of the school year had begun and I was being swept away in the current by more pressing matters.

About a month ago I suggested the use of BlackBerries again to one of the English staff members and a few of the kids in the 9th grade began using them for some video work...but where was that tidal wave of excitement that should have come with permission to whip out one's phone in lessons and use it with the teacher's permission?

Needless to say it can be advantageous to place things on the back burner. Good things can come to those who wait (whatever the motivation). This past week I have been overwhelmed by students wanting to download voice-notes, pictures and video that they have taken on their blackberries for class assignments. At first it didn't hit me, the excitement I should have felt wasn't there. I was in the midst of preparing for our Digital Oscars and every second counted...but the kids come first and we managed to find a few ways of getting their content onto a computer.

Those with data plans simply emailed them, others downloaded to my Mac's Blackberry desktop, while later in the week we found we were able to open the BlackBerry files directly from the disk icon on the desktop....and then it hit me! This is exactly what I had been trying to do and it was happening, change had occurred and kids were using the tool, which 95% of them now have, for all sorts of multimedia tasks in lessons. Not only that, these were the little ones, the 6th graders, with whom I had never attempted to use mobile phones with in lessons. They had seen the potential for themselves, the value of those amazing little devices which seem to be an extra appendage permanently attached to the hands of most preteens and teens, okay let's face it most adults too.

It was a Eureka moment (once I stopped long enough to take it all in). The waves of change are certainly rising it was the students who triggered them in the end!

ABC Digital Oscars

2011-05-27T08:06:00.000-07:00

We held our very first ABC Digital Oscars Award Show this week. A great deal of extra effort and hard work went into this on the part of students and staff, organising and producing and rendering videos, and it paid off. Ticket supplies were exhausted hours before the event, and the Performing Arts Centre looked spectacularly glamourous, bearing little resemblance to the exam room it had been just hours before. Parents and students began arriving quite early to vie for one of the special candlelit tables, while excitement and anticipation swelled.

During the event student work from 5th to 12th grade was spotlighted and rewarded, to screams of delight and hardy applause, while superb artistic interludes took place between categories.

It was a great evening which we hope to build on for school year 2011/12, a year for which we have new and exciting plans for further student digital video work.

I have included a video of our nominee interviews, the Best Movie of the Year award and the grand finale.
Enjoy!

YouTube's Copyright Video

2011-04-15T09:20:00.000-07:00

I came across this video today in an EduBlogger post by Ronnie Burt entitled Teaching students about copyright – the YouTube way. According to the post, YouTube has plans to make anyone found guilty of a copyright offense related to the video site, to watch it and take a short test.

I cringed initially when The Happy Tree Friends popped up, but the video is cleverly put together and lacks the usual blood and gore generally evident in Tree Friends videos.

If you have 4 minutes or so take a look.

15 Minutes Well Spent

2011-03-29T12:32:00.000-07:00

Alan November's Ted Talk

This is worth watching. It confirms and illustrates in typical Alan November style, what many of us believe about education and the direction good practice in learning should take.

This sort of teaching and learning may prove quite challenging initially. Schools probably aren't set up for it. Teachers and students may have difficulty adopting new teaching and learning strategies as the responsibility for learning shifts quite heavily onto the learners' shoulders. Isn't that where the responsibility for learning should lie?

Teachers as facilitators, empowered students who make good choices, problem solve and publish work worth sharing with others; have got to be steps in the right direction.

ICT Project-A Better World- Creating Global Connections through Global Issues

2011-03-23T16:31:00.000-07:00

The 6th grade students have been working on a multimedia project this CAL period, which has focused their attention on global issues. This is a collaborative project which has now extended beyond the ABC walls and is currently shared by two other schools. These schools are both located in the United States.

During the project students have: researched global issues, collaboratively written a group rap song (based on one issue) using Google Docs, performed Google Advanced searches for Creative Commons licensed media, “Blabberized” images so as to create speaking avatars, mixed musical loops and recorded their raps using GarageBand, edited and dubbed their videos in iMovie and uploaded their work, including a reflection to the project Wiki.
This was a great project which enabled students to learn many new skills, add a number of digital tools to their tool kits, enjoy each step in their learning and share their work with other schools as well as the entire world. The projects can be viewed at our “A Better World” Wiki. Enjoy!

Working with Prezi

2011-03-07T09:09:00.000-08:00

This is the second year we have used Prezi as our presentation platform for 8th grade ICT. This year however, was special! We got to use Prezi Meeting for the first time, while creating presentations on student tours of France. This was a collaborative initiative between ICT and the French Dept wherein the students researched destinations, bookmarked and annotated websites using Diigo Groups, tweeted their findings and finally wrote up their presentation in French and created a Prezi to go along with it.

The power for Prezi Meeting is the ability awarded users to edit simultaneously, present and view the changes each member of the group makes while they are making them.

Please take a look at our French Prezi Project Gallery.

The following is a short video of our students working on the project.

Do you want to get their attention? SketchUp is one way.

2011-02-14T13:45:00.000-08:00

Image via CrunchBaseThis is my first year teaching with Google SketchUp and I have to wonder why I haven't done this before.

It was the first 8th Grade lesson so I played the introductory video for the kids. It is quite a long video, which can go either way really. In this case I stopped the video before the end as we were running short on time, despite the gasps and other exclamations from the kids. They wanted more. I put the movie back on and they continued to soak it all up. At that point we only had 10 more minutes in the lesson, for them to explore. They couldn't wait to get back onto the computers. The practically tore out of the room amongst various exclamations the loudest being, "I can't wait to try this out!"

Did I say there were only about 10 minutes left in the lesson? By the time those 10 minutes were up. Every student had created a building with windows, doors and in some cases special textures. For the next lesson, they are bringing their English work on a Author's Mind as a Room. This is where it all comes together. They will be creating the room that they described in their English lessons, using SketchUp and uploading their work to that author's geographical location in Google Earth.

Digital Storytelling

2011-02-05T08:54:00.000-08:00

We as teachers are storytellers. Our teacher stories may be about historical events or something fictitious, a retelling, an explanation. These are only a few examples, as a complete listing would be very extensive. Our students also tell stories in a similar fashion. We ask them to present, write essays, explain, create, retell, demonstrate, illustrate, etc.. on a daily basis. It makes sense that we model these skills and teach them how to use a broader range of storytelling tools.

Below you find a listing of just such tools. They are digital tools for telling stories. The are certainly not the only tools. There are far too many to try out in just one session, literally thousands exist. What you will find however, is that the tools below are educationally proven to work; they are free(with basic accounts), user friendly, versatile, fun and provide high impact results for teaching and learning.

It is our sincerest hope that amongst this small example of digital tools, you will find one that you are truly drawn to. One whose teaching and learning potential beckons you; a tool to make a part of your very own digital toolbox.

Podcasting	Other Audio	Programming
GarageBand 1 GarageBand 2	Create collaborative, interactive slide shows. Make your pictures speak. Talking customizable avatars.	Create interactive stories, presentations and games Lessons Presentations Create zooming presentations.
Videos	Books	Tours
Create orchestrated videos with pictures, video and music. Create video animations. Create videos based on search terms. Stop Motion Lesson 1 Lesson 2 Other Video Lessons	Create 3D pop-up books. Cartoons Cartoon strip generator for under 13. Cartoon strip generator for 13 and older.	Create collaborative online maps and tours. Create interactive 3D tours with embedded content. Interactive literature based tours.

*If you are interested in investigating additional digital storytelling tools, use these resources which were compiled by a panel of international educators.

A Better World Project

2011-01-10T13:05:00.000-08:00

The Quest

I have spent a good part of the day restructuring what's left of the 6th grade ICT curriculum for this year. This inevitably prompted me to embark on a quest in cyberspace, the objective of which was to hunt down inspirational ideas for our 6th grade student video work this year. In doing so, I revisited an amazing presentation our headmaster shared with me and dug around until I found what I was looking for. Splice and dub videos really caught my attention. They can be quite novel when done well and differ from any other video work we do at the ABC.

The Creative Internet 106 Things

The Topic

Now, at ISTE 2010, after Rischard's less than enthralling yet still poignant keynote, I made a promise to myself and my students. I would search out ways to work global awareness into our ICT projects, and focus on the Millennium Goals whenever possible. I decided that our video work this year should revolve around student messages which convey their ideas for making the world a better place.

Parking

Lately, when planning and teaching, I find myself in the curious position of being wiki dependent. I can't fathom working without one, so I created yet another one, This wiki will be used to share student digital projects which focus on ideas for making the world a better place.

The Plan

Our first project will take place in mid January. For this activity the 6th grade students will create a short spliced and dubbed video in small groups using different characters and/or objects to share their plan for making the world a better place. As soon as the videos are ready they will be embedded in the wiki.

The Invitation
It is our hope that other schools will become interested in this work and take on an "A Better World" activity using some form of digital media, which can then be added to the wiki. If you are interested in your school taking part in this. please contact me by asking to join the wiki or via email (jennifergarcia@abc-net.edu.sv) so that I can give you access.

QR Codes

2010-12-14T06:25:00.000-08:00

Have you ever wondered what those strange new bar codes are that are popping up in newspapers, on posters, on the web?

They are QR codes (2 dimensional bar codes) and they offer one of the easiest methods by far of loading web content on a Smart phone. To give it a try, using the scan option on your phone. What page does this code link to?

If you are interested in using QR codes in your daily work, post them on a website, a blog, a social network, sign up at bit.ly, shorten a link and generate one of your very own.

Just consider the implications this may have for the role of mobile devices in education!

Phones in My Classroom By Choice!

2010-12-08T06:44:00.000-08:00

Telephones don't have to be a curse. No, I don't like answering them or yacking away for hours on them, never did, even as a child. There is a difference however, today's telephones are so much more intriguing than those that existed when I was a child. For the longest time, I have been reading and chatting to others about the phones our students carry around, telling myself that I can make good use of these devices in my classes, but that's all it was...talk.

Today's mobile phones are not only phones, but so much more. They are Smart Phones! A good majority of our students own BlackBerries or other phones that hook up to a 3G network or our school wifi. Some of these devices may not even be phones at all, some of them are iPods!

Yesterday I decided I was jumping in with both feet and eyes wide open. It was no longer going to be about the talk. Yesterday I decided it was time for action.

I created an account at PollEverywhere which is a great site that enables users to create polls, share them online with links or as embedded features on blogs and wikis, and provides a variety of ways for those being polled to respond. I didn't want this to cost my kids any money so I decided against text and opted for Tweet and Web voting.

During the lesson we were working on micro-blogging research with Twitter (plan A)and/or Today's Meet (Plan B). (We had trouble creating Twitter accounts from school.) At the end of the lesson I asked the kids to go get their phones and other devices capable of connecting to the school wifi or a 3G network. Other teachers in the building gave me a few strange looks (Generally speaking, cell phones are to be turned off and packed away during the school day.)

I emailed the link to the kids and they got on task and answered the poll, while we watched with excitement as their responses appeared on the screen. I have asked them to bring their devices in again next week and thanked them for being a part of my little experiment. I am pretty sure that this is going to become a part of my weekly starters and/or plenaries all because my kids already own Smart Phones or other Smart devices.

When a Lesson Explodes in New Directions

2010-12-01T13:17:00.000-08:00

One of my 7th grade classes was settling down to work on their collaborative presentations, which they share with a school in Colorado, when all of a sudden there was great excitement! Okay there was an explosion of excitement. The other class was also online and working on the presentations. To say that my kids were thrilled is an understatement. Immediately Google Apps group chat windows began popping up and student exclamations could be heard all around the LRC. These students were no longer separated by thousands of miles.

We very quickly shifted the entire class into a seminar room, got Skype up and running at both ends and within minutes were video conferencing with our partner school, as the excitement began to crescendo. We had not prepared in advance for this. It was a bit of a surprise, so there was no script, just kids engaging in discussions about each other, face to face with their partners in another country. Hobbies, favourite books, musicians and the weather were the main topics of discussion.

It's interesting how many of us find it easier to engage in text chats, where ideas flow easier than in video chats, where all of a sudden the most outgoing child might find themselves at a loss for words.

Anyway we just managed to get through all the groups, and with five minutes remaining in the lesson, the kids returned to their computers to finish up working on their presentations and texting with their partners. The kids at our end were very reluctant to log off of their chat sessions to pack up to go home. That's powerful!

You know when a lesson has surpassed your expectations, and become something even greater.This was one of those moments.

The Latest Shift Happens

2010-11-25T14:37:00.000-08:00

Have you seen the latest shift happens? If these figures are accurate, the amount of activity both social and financial happening by way of social networks is astounding.

It is certainly updated and worth watching.
Check it out at our new ABCICT Blog!

United Nations Projects-Millennium Goals and Awareness

2010-11-08T09:19:00.000-08:00

The LRC Celebrated United Nations with a fantastic display of artifacts from around the world. Most of these items were loaned to the LRC by members of staff. Tours were run for students across the school and special bookmarks were made available to the community.
In ICt lessons students in KS3 worked on various cross curricular projects, with a global emphasis. Take a look at the descriptions below.

Scratch

The 8th Grade students have finished working on their Scratch projects. This year they were asked to choose a Millennium Goal to focus on and develop a project around it. Most of these projects have been uploaded to the ABCICT Scratch Gallery and there is quite a variety to browse through and enjoy. You can even download, run and check out the programming used, via the Scratch Website.

Reaction Grid
The student Art Gallery in the ABC El Salvador Region is now up to date. Students used original art work created by KS3 Students to construct framed canvases and create 3 dimensional art for the region. If you have a Reaction Grid Account you can log in and teleport to ABC El Salvador to view the work in person. If not the picture above will give you an idea of what the gallery currently looks like.
http://learningresourcescentre.pbworks.com/

Google Maps and Earth
The 6th grade students have completed their virtual tours of France using Google Maps and Google Earth. The students included important place marks, pictures and descriptions in these tours, as well as a spoken introduction to the regions they were focusing on, using Voki avatars. These projects are viewable from the Gallery at ABCICT. You must have Google Earth installed on your computer to view them.

Tagxedo

2010-10-20T18:52:00.000-07:00

We were looking at ways of promoting language in classrooms recently and this caused me to revisit some of my favourite tag and word cloud generators. In doing so I had a play with Tagxedo once again and wasn't disappointed. Not only can you create a great variety of word clouds, but you can create them in different shapes with plenty of different colours and fonts. This in itself is cool, but the best is yet to come. Apparently you can actually embed the cloud and it becomes interactive, with words zooming in as you hover over them. You can't do that with Wordle (my favourite tag and word cloud generator of all times).
Check out my latest Tagxedo.

(This is not the embedded version as I have had little success with this feature, but would love to hear from someone who has gotten it to work.)

Trying out Nota

2010-10-12T10:31:00.000-07:00

I came across Nota today on the iLearn Technology Blog. After reading the description of it, I had to have a play. Especially since we have been looking for alternatives for wiki and site home pages.

Nota is an easy to use collaborative work space which is Glog like and more.
With Nota it is easy to import pictures from your various online accounts, including Flickr and Picasa, as well as add message boards, links, shapes and text. It is quite simple to figure out, and can also be accessed through PhotoPeach accounts. If you don't have a PhotoPeach account there is also an option for creating one on the the Nota site.

Notas embed easily into Google Sites and Wikispaces so the potential for interactive walls (Invite participants) as well as home pages is definitely there.

"

Scratch and Millennium Goals

2010-10-11T08:10:00.000-07:00

Image via WikipediaThe 8th grade students have initiated their Scratch programming projects this year, with a focus on the United Nations Millennium Goals. Students are very much directing their own learning in this project. Each student has chosen a goal to build a Scratch project around and will also choose the type of project they will create. We look forward to sharing them with you soon.

ABC El Salvador Reaction Grid

2010-10-11T08:07:00.000-07:00

The ABC now owns a virtual plot of land in Reaction Grid, which is an online world for students to learn in. The 7th grade and the Reaction Grid Extra- curricular club students are the first to explore and construct in ABC’s new virtual space. For the moment the focus is on creating 3D content that is representative of El Salvador and the ABC.

So far the kids have really enjoyed the work they have been doing, creating virtual content. Our task for this week to is to build the Art Gallery which will house examples of student work from our El Salvador Month Exposition.

Here is the link to our lessons so far.

The Power of Prezi, on Social Bookmarking

2010-09-21T11:07:00.000-07:00

This came through on Twitter a few minute ago, from Shamblesguru. The following is not only a great demo about the importance of Social Bookmarking tools Not only does it spotlight one of the best of the bunch- Diigo, but it is also a prime example of how to truly harness the power of Prezi. Just look at how cleverly this presentation has been put together.

Social Bookmarking for Educators on Prezi

Using the Collaborative Power of Google Calendars

2010-09-19T11:44:00.000-07:00

I finally got my students to begin making use of their Google Calendars this month. We set up the lesson timetables, added interesting calendars, created birthday, friend and team calendars and of course made it all look pretty with cute backgrounds. Animated backgrounds soon became the rage once we discovered we could use GIFs.

All of this was pretty powerful in itself, but then we took things a step further. We created calendars in which to place the different cultural events happening around the country, during September, El Salvador's month of Independence celebrations. The kids invited their classmates to collaborate on their calendars with them and very quickly it became clear that they would be able to get the task done with little hassle, learn about the various events happening around the country and be able to share me into their calendars so I could then print them off and post them all over the Learning Resources Centre. I was intending to post them all over the school, but dissuaded myself from it due to point number 2 below.

There are two things that would have made this an even more powerful experience:

The cool backgrounds don't transfer across, which I understand as they would overwrite the backgrounds of those who are shared in. There could however be an option to choose between backgrounds for different calendar views and printing.
It would be awesome if we could print off descriptions in month mode or week mode, brief as they may be, so that people would have a better idea of what the events entail. I couldn't find a way to do this, so ours are very basic print outs.

All in all, Google Calendar is a great tool and kids as well as teachers should be encouraged to make better use of it.

Spring Note-Cool Collaborative Tool

2010-09-19T11:28:00.000-07:00

I have been on the outlook for another cool collaborative tool, one that requires a very low learning curve so that students can just jump in and work with it.
Today I finally found a moment to look through my Diigo groups and came across, among many things, Spring Note.

Spring Note is a wikish sort of tool, that is set up with templates for to do lists, members, discussion, and links. Now, you could easily set up a wiki template to do the same job, but SpringNote has already done this for you. The options vary depending on the type of notebook you wish to create.
It comes with a nice WYSIWYG editor which allows you to embed code for maps, video and slide shows and more. It certainly is worth a go if you are planning on engaging in work of a collaborative nature.

Moving On

2010-09-15T10:50:00.000-07:00

Image via WikipediaI have finally made the decision to move on. I am very thankful to Edublogs for having provided a home for my blog during these past 3 years, but mine remains a free account. As the options have been repeatedly reduced from free accounts over the last year, so too has my patience with the situation waned. As our school is a Google Apps institution, it makes better sense for me to move forward with Blogger, which will soon become a part of our Apps Accounts. It also links in nicely with other Google Apps that we use with our blogs at school. In fact I am now officially climbing down, not without pain, from my Edublogs soapbox. I will now be promoting Blogger at school for all new blogs.
Those who already oversee one of our many school Edublogs accounts may also find themselves switching over, unless their departments are on board with shelling out the cash to keep their Edublogs in top form.
If anybody knows of a way to migrate (as some might say backwards) from Edublogs to Blogger, I would really appreciate a brief explanation, or link to a tutorial.
If interested, this is the link to my new blog.

GarageBand, Jamendo and Creative Commons

2010-08-20T07:05:00.000-07:00

Last year a colleague of mine, who is a very accomplished musician, began to use GarageBand for recording and mixing music tracks. This work lead to the creation of an amazing album and didn't stop there. After many hours of hard work he then uploaded the album, entitled Boats on the Bay, to Jamendo. Jamendo is an online musical platform community, that allows artists to upload their work and share it with the world. Listeners have the option to listen online as well as download the music to their computers. Jamendo automatically licenses all work under Creative Commons.

What a fantastic example of a teacher using digital technology to create, publish and share their work through one of the many great web services available. Not only is his work now published online for all to enjoy, but our students are able to access it along with all the other albums on the site, for use in their digital projects. You can imagine how exciting it must be for them to be able to use the published works of one of their very own teachers. The next step will be to focus on getting students involved in composing, recording and publishing their own masterpieces.

I have included a link to the album. Please feel free to listen in.

Boats on the Bay

Back to School Resolutions

2010-08-12T04:52:00.000-07:00

My action plan for 2010-11 is pretty jam packed and possibly over ambitious. It would be impractical to mention it all, but when I think about the upcoming school year, certainly several goals come to mind.

3D Constructions-Sketchup is a powerful program offered by Google for Free. It is fairly user friendly and allows for design and construction in 3D. The 3D Warehouse is full of great pieces that can be added to furnish, landscape and basically embellish work. The possibilities are endless really. All one needs is a topic that would be greatly enhanced through it use. One that comes to mind is an English unit which has students design an author's room, as the culminating activity in an author study.

The virtual worlds I want to use with my students are: Quest Atlantis -has some new units that would be perfect for work in Life Skills, Second Life, Google Maps and Earth to continue with the virtual tours work we did last year (Did you know you can embed code into Google Earth text boxes!), Reaction Grid for working on in-world 3D thematic constructions, and possibly a compilation of a student gallery.

Collaborative Projects are going to be big for us this year both internally and in conjunction with other schools. I met quite a few wonderful educators at ISTE who have already started the ball rolling on this by linking up their teachers with us. The next step is to begin pairing up teachers and projects at both ends. There are so many options for this: wikis, blogs, Nings, Elluminate, Skype, not to mention all the Google Apps.

Programming with Scratch with 7th and 8th grades-We began this last year and made quite a bit of headway. We are now in a position to push up the Scratch learning curve for both teachers and students.

PLN's for staff-Okay this is terribly ambitious and I don't expect to get everyone on board, but there are now certain members of staff who are ready to take this next important step in lifelong learning.

We will need to continue to support current reading club through our Reading Club wiki and find new ways to promote reading with students.

Update and expand the LRC, ABCICT and Web Fluency wikis and make best use of them with staff and students and parents. These sites are important learning hubs, full of activities and resources as well as one of your main means of communication with the school community.

Continue with our push on information literacy for students, and bring new staff members on board.

Continue work with student digital portfolio wikis and ensure that staff members are aware and on board with making best use of them.

It is all about teamwork and careful planning. Teachers are key to this, and the greater the variety the richer experiences become. It is also time to get the kids on board at the planning level whenever possible. When they have a hand in directing their learning powerful things happen. I have huge expectations for the upcoming school year and look forward to all the challenges and successes and yes even the odd failures when they occur. It is all part of the learning experience.

ISTE: After the Conference

2010-07-06T07:06:00.000-07:00

ISTE always leaves me with a ton of new ideas crashing around inside my head. This year was no exception.

: Image via CrunchBase

Google came out on top for me this year. Google Lit trips, whether those already created or those we create ourselves, will provide an important next step in using Google Maps and Earth to enhance our book studies and digital story telling across subjects. I didn't know you could embed text in Google Earth Place-marks! Just imagine the things you can add to your stories and tours with such an option. Voki and Blabberize narrators come to mind immediately. Here is a link for Google Earth for Educators for further exploration.

Google Search Stories was a new one for me. I have to wonder why I haven't come across it before. What a novel way to tell a story using Google Search!

I lined up for and was lucky to enough to get into the Google Wave BYOL Session, without a ticket (Yes it is possible and I did it a few times for different sessions, during the conference.). I learned a bit more about using bots with Wave for translations and other purposes. This is great as I am hoping to use Wave as a collaborative platform this coming year with grades 6-8, but only after carefully planning out the structure.

Other things that got my mind revving were GPS and Google Forms for storytelling (choose your own adventure types, scavenger hunts). Now I have never used GPS before and have decided to face my fear and give it a whirl, but I have used Google Forms a lot, never however, in the ways the Google people where demonstrating. By adding pages you can incorporate many different routes within the same form for your students to follow. This is very cool indeed!

One of my fellow Poster Presenters reminded me about Webspiration, a great online idea mapper which allows for uploading media and collaboration, questioning, comments and chat. After a bit of digging around I realised I actually had an account with Webspiration! I am now ready to say goodbye to my other mind mapping apps and welcome Webspiration with open arms. Thank You Kevin from New Zealand!

There are too many sessions that I would have like to have attended, most clashed with other things I had to do. I haven't really mentioned Keynotes or Poster sessions which were equally as powerful as the other sessions I attended. Really a team approach is necessary for optimization of the ISTE experience, but the amount of learning and number of connections that are created for even one person at this conference, are guaranteed to stir the educational pot and get things moving at any school.

Coming to an End

2010-06-01T04:05:00.000-07:00

It is the end of the school year, only a few more weeks to go. A time for relection amidst reports, grades and special activities.

When I look back on sy09/10, I feel a sense of amazing accomplishment for our school. This past year our students and teachers made incredible strides, in working with technology as part of their teaching and learning endeavors.

During this past year, the LRC continued to support departmental and cross curricular projects, as well as teach normal ICT and web fluency lessons, but amidst this, something out of the ordinary occurred! On many occasions Teachers and students arrived, ready to work on an array of web 2.0 and digital media projects, with the skills to implement them- and this is the clincher- with little or no support.

We have gone from a point of steep learning curves to a lesser incline in which our staff and students are comfortable with current technology. We as a school are now building upon our new found skills and utilising well stocked digital toolboxes, to support and enhance learning across subjects.

Students are in a position to choose between a multitude of applications and tools, finding the one that is just right for their work. At any given time they may be creating a video, podcast, cartoon strip, writing a Scratch program or creating a Prezi all for the same assignment. What's phenomenal about this is not that they can use the tools, but that they are taking their own approaches, choosing amongst appropriate applications, while embarking on these learning journeys. Equally as exciting is the fact that teachers are allowing, no- encouraging them, to do so. We have reached a point in which students can take the first steps in directing aspects of their own learning, and teachers are fine with this.

I have been working on my End of Year Headmaster's Report (which is probably way too long), over this past week. I found it hard to sit down to it initially, perhaps feeling a bit overwhelmed by all that needed including, not knowing where to begin. As I began going through it however, I felt myself thrown back in time and immersed in each of the experiences that I was recording. I was awed to see just how much has been accomplished this school year.

I realise that our school's experiences are not totally unique, in fact I would be terribly concerned if this were the case. It is my hope that my colleagues around the world are taking a moment from busy schedules to reflect on their school year, whether half way through or finishing up for the year. I would hope that they are overcome by smiles and a sense of pride in their institutions, when they too realise just how incredible their school's journeys have been.

Presentation-Research Using Social Networks

2010-05-19T05:28:00.000-07:00

: Image via CrunchBase

I will be presenting a poster session on the Research Project I did using Social Neworks, at ISTE 2010. I have included a brief description of the topics I hope to discuss during the presentation.

Diigo

In this presentation we will discuss the the educational potential of Diigo as a learning network, showing participants how to set up and manage student learning groups, collect in homework digitally and encourage student collaboration through the creation of a learning network.In working with Diigo, we will look at: social bookmarking to groups, use of tags, highlighting and sticky notes, comments, following and being followed.

Twitter

I hope to demonstrate some ways in which students can use Twitter to take research notes and share them with others in their groups, using hash tags. We will look at other alternative to Twitter, as well as the pros and cons of using each with students.

NoodlbeBib and EasyBib

I plan on sharing our experiences with using NoodleBib for generating citation lists, paraphrasing and creating outlines and discuss EasyBib as an free/paid alternative for generating citations.

Prezi

We will finish by looking at Prezi as a powerful presentation application, with a focus on how it can support presentation reform and empower students to create interactive presentations.

Earth Day is Coming Soon

2010-04-10T08:47:00.000-07:00

: Image via Wikipedia

Easter is over, spring break has officially ended and the next big focus is Earth Day, coming up on April 22nd. For the second time in a row our school will be celebrating it as a part of Earth Week.

During Earth Week classes from across the school find interesting ways to focus on taking better care of the Earth. As well, short workshops are run each day after school for students and teachers. Last year we worked on making recycled bottle blocks, recycled paper creations, we held a butterfly release, worked out our carbon footprints and planted a tree in front of the Learning Resources Centre. This year we are hoping to create a recycled materials structure with the help of students and teachers from across the school.

While thinking about this, I felt compelled to begin compiling list of great Earth Day resources for teachers and students. The initial work is now parked on our LRC Website with new additions due shortly. These sites contain a rich variety of interactives, videos, photo galleries and lesson plans. Most of these are for 6-12 but there are a few lesson plans and resources for Primary school teachers and students too.

Earth Day two weeks away (canada.com)

500 Teachers Pledge to Go Paperless for Earth Day 2010! (downes.ca)

Google Custom Search Tool-Hats off to Google Yet Again!

2010-03-24T02:00:00.000-07:00

Yet another reason to adore Google!!!

I have just come across a spectatular way to create pathfinders for students. Leave it to Google to empower use with such a simple yet potent tool. I am referring to Google Custom search.

Through Custom Search Google enables you to create two different types of search tools, one that includes only sites you specify, and one that focuses on sites you specify, but also searches the rest of the web. Basically you determine your search topic, websites to search within, keywords, and yes you can alter its look as well. Once done the embedding code is made available along with multiple options to edit and refine your search tool further. Not only that, yes like most things Google, you CAN collaborate on it.

I was playing around with a very rudimentary WW2 timeline and picture pathfinder which I have embedded below. Anyone feel like collaborating on it?

Google Continues To Dominate The Internet (ronmedlin.com)

Gabcast and Podcasts

2010-03-18T00:30:00.000-07:00

: Image via Wikipedia

I have been on the lookout for a place to host our student produced podcasts for quite some time now. Originally I intended to use a blog for this as the podcasts could be uploaded as posts and RSS'd. I've changed my mind!

I've started to read Toys to Tools by Liz Kolb, and in doing so came across Gabcast. Gabcast is great for uploading podcasts from phones, it allows you to create different channels, but more importantly it allows you to upload your podcast episodes, painlessly.

I have just started to use Gabcast, but I like what I have seen so far.

Did I say you can also link to and embed your podcast episodes?
(A word of advice, set the height of the podcast player to 90 instead of the default 76 or the play button may not be visible.)
Gabcast!

ABCICT #1 - Welcome to the ABCICT Podcast Channel

Our Welcome Message

Virtual Field Trips

2010-03-09T09:02:00.000-08:00

: Image via Wikipedia

I have long been fascinated by the potential that Second life and other virtual worlds hold for educational activities including virtual field trips.

Whyville is great for the younger kids. It gives them the chance to get used to virtual worlds, in a safe teacher manageable environment and provides plenty of educational activities for students and teachers to engage in. Many of our 6th grade students took to it so much last school year, that they would log in from home when it wasn't a homework assignment and meet up to work on different activities with their friends.

Quest Atlantis is another virtual world that offers students carefully scaffolded learning quests to embark on as they work their way through different teleport locations. I've done the required courses and am excited about taking a group in. We are hoping to begin with a class of teachers who we think will be inspired enough to build quests into their curriculum.

I came across Reaction Grid very recently and have only begun to investigate its potential for working with students, but there are already a lot of great destinations to visit. My impression from my very limited experience of it, is that many teachers at present are using it for learning about construction in virtual 3D worlds. I would love to hear from people who are using it successfully with their students.

Second Life (including the teen grid)! Wow comes to mind every time I think of it. I have been using Second Life on and off for the last 2 years, mostly as a way of learning how to get around on the grid, attending workshops and investigating what is available. I left it for about 6 months and when I returned Wow had become WOW!!! There are so many new places to discover, meet at and learn from. I tend to fixate on applications that wow me and Second Life has certainly stolen a large chunk of my attention lately.

Once hooked anew, I decided to continue with my previous quest of searching out destinations with field trip potential. I soon found that the grid had expanded to the point that I needed to begin cataloging in some shape or form the many destinations I came across. Enter wikispaces, my all time favourite for wikis. Its nice to know that whenever you need to bring content together in one place you can quickly create yourself a parking lot using a wiki.

My hope is that the wiki will become more than a parking lot however. I would like to see it grow, and am hoping that others interested in virtual worlds will help me with that. So far I have put everything together on this page, which is expanding so quickly, I might need to begin linking off of it soon, to new pages for housing content. If you are at all interested in virtual worlds in education and virtual field trips in Second Life, please take a look at the links I have gathered and request access to the wiki, so we can build the collection together.

What We Hope is an Exceptional Resource

2010-03-01T02:37:00.000-08:00

Our LRC website was created to house a rich assortment of teaching tools, student resources, picture and video galleries and more.
The main interface is a pictorial, user friendly Glog embedded in a wiki. The Glog allows designers to link images and text to web pages and can be embedded on most sites.

Within the LRC Website community members can access, virtual bookshelves, which highlight new arrivals, and link to user reviews. They can also enjoy a great assortment of e-books from many different collections.

Community members can find collections of web tools, for editing photos, working with audio and video, as well as access digital image, video, and audio collections. Many of the resource in these collections are licensed for reuse and remixing into digital projects.

There are times when community members might want to request a resource for the LRC library. Our website offers an easy solution to this by hosting a request for resources section. Using this option members of the community can ask for books and magazines as well as other resources to be included in the yearly orders. These requests will be reviewed by LRC staff members several times a year.

It is easy to browse the current library collection online. This includes not only books, but magazines as well. ABC users, and people from around the world, are able to check which resources the library contains and which copies are available for checking out.

Keeping up to date with happenings at the LRC is also quite easy. Regular reminders and information updates are issued through the LRC Twitter stream and Voki services, on the right side bar.

Community news and events are also posted weekly and can be found under the News Section. The LRC Events Calendar is embedded in the website for easy browsing of upcoming orders and events.

In house video and photo galleries are available for viewing and the Ustream link will take interested parties to live streaming of LOL’s Friday shows.

The research section provides students and teachers with important guidelines and resources for teaching and learning, as does the section on presentation guidelines.

Don’t be surprised if the main page changes a bit throughout the year. It’s to be expected, as relevant links to topical or new initiatives are added.

Some LRC Quick Links

Browse the recently updated ABCICT Scratch Gallery.

Browse the New Book Arrivals.

Browse the community events which are published on the LRC Website in the News Section.

View LOL videos from the In House Video section of the LRC Website.

Browse and read e-books online.

Search our Useful Resources collections.

Browse the Library Collection online.

My Wish Lists for Diigo and SimplyBox

2010-02-25T12:32:00.000-08:00

I love Diigo and can't live without SimplyBox.

Diigo is there for me in so many ways. Bookmarks are just the beginning. It is my new lifeline to Delicious (my backups of all backups), my research central, a big part of my PLN, and a vital teaching tool. I love the ease of bookmarking and annotating, sending to Twitter is also a perk. That said there are a few things I would really like to see in Diigo.

Bookmarking to multiple groups- So often I would like to bookmark to several groups at a time, but can't. This means bookmarking once for each group.

Easy list construction using tag bundles or something similar-I am too far gone with my bookmarking to go back into each one and add it to a list. Tag bundles are a great way to easily bring in content to a list. Can we have that please?

Easy user searches within groups- I use Diigo groups for teaching research and when I want to see what each member of the group has contributed, I would like to be able to search out that member, and have all the content they have added to the group appear. As it stands I need to go to each member's library or scroll through pages of group bookmarks and comments.

Citation Generator-Diigo would be the perfect tool for teaching research skills if it had a citation generator similar perhaps to Noodle Tools.

Sending to Twitter-might be a bit easier if the actual tweet was based on the description section of the bookmark. It would be important for this to remain editable of course, in order to keep things succinct.

SimplyBox

SimplyBox is my Digital Teacher Toolkit. Only the best of the best gets in there, tools which I know I am going to use or recommend to others in our school, now or later on in the school year. I am very careful about its organisation and am trying to ensure that bookmarks have decent, if somewhat brief comments and a workable tag system. I love the fact that I can share my public url's directly to Twitter as well as on websites and with friends. Again, there are some changes that I think would make it ever more fantastic.

Sub Boxes or Boxes within Boxes-Presently I have things organised into crates which contain boxes, but I now feel the need to have a boxes within boxes in order to keep things organised in a hierarchy.

Shared Boxes-When having students share their boxes with me (They use it for collborative research much in the same way we use Diigo Groups.)I receive the emails, but only certain boxes actually appear as shared in my account.

Boxing to Multiple Boxes-Just like with Diigo, I would live to be able to box to several boxes simultaneously. At present I need to bookmark to each box separately.

Copy and Paste-I would like to be able to copy and paste bits and pieces of text from the comments box to the tags, twitter etc...instead of typing things out each time. It would be a real time saver if we could have this option.

Both of these applications are fantastic tools that no teacher or student should go with out. If you haven't checked them out yet, you are truly missing out on the organizational and collaborative power they offer. If used effectively both applications can act as the foundation for teacher digital toolkit as well as potent teaching tools.

Diigo v4 is the Best Social Bookmarking Tool Ever! (newcommbiz.com)

Read It Later turning bookmarks into news pages (news.cnet.com)

Safety, The Rules Have Changed and Then There's Facebook

2010-02-10T07:47:00.000-08:00

Look both ways before you cross the street! Don't talk to strangers! Some safety rules haven't changed at all, but the arena in which they are practiced has.

: Image via CrunchBase

It's Internet Safety Week at our school and we decided it had to be a whole school event this year, which basically means that the majority of grades are directly involved somehow. In the Secondary School we have put together a series of mini lessons for form time, most of which contain short video clips, and hopefully lead to plenty of discussion. There are so many great resources out there to choose from, that we have been able to provide a fairly rich array of experiences for the kids. During the week we are also running assemblies for each grade which focus on web presence and safety settings. There is a clever video from the CEOP which we use in the assemblies and which really gets the message across and spurs kids into action, when it comes to their online presence. This leads me to Facebook.

We are aware that many of our students under the age of 13 have Facebook accounts, but do their parents know? Let's face it, the kids are there for the apps and the cool factor! During our assemblies this week (after the video) a short demonstration is given on how to apply safer settings in Facebook, right at the point when the kids are starting to really worry about the information they have posted online. I've uploaded the presentation (which is not mindblowing or terribly pretty, just a set of slides taking you through the process of adjusting your different settings). This presentation has also been posted on our ABCICT wiki by student request. The response so far has been good. Kids are looking for help in adjusting their privacy settings.

So what message are we sending out? The message is simple. We know you may have a facebook account and if you are under 13 you shouldn't. Your parents need to be aware of it, be able to monitor your use of it and you need to ensure your behaviour is safe. We are not condoning it, but rather accepting that this is the case and trying to cover all bases in keeping everyone safe. What's missing then? The parents of course.

Parents for whatever reasons are often unaware of the extent of their child's online activities and let's face it, kids (and other people) will lie about their age to get what they want, in this case an account. Parents themeselves are an essential link in all of this. They need to be aware of the situation, regardless of their child's age, talk to their child about their experiences online, help them monitor friend lists, privacy settings and reinforce appropriate online behaviour. Parents need to know. Sometimes its hard to get the message out. In our case the school has started an online newsletter, which intended specifically for the purpose of opening up the issues by informing and supporting parents in keeping their kids safe.

When you are focused on something like this good things often make their way to you. Just this afternoon a tweet came through on TweetDeck about a Facebook Safety blog post by Laura Deisley. Perfect! I've included it in this post as it contains an excellent set of guidelines for helping parents sort out their child's safety settings.

Advice For Parents On Safer Internet Day (news.sky.com)

Online safety for five-year-olds (news.bbc.co.uk)

Safer Internet Day for 5-7 year olds (guardian.co.uk)

Book Blurbs

2010-02-05T02:29:00.000-08:00

In an effort to further promote reading, the ABC has added a new component to its Library Programme, called Book Blurbs.

The Book Blurb programme is intended to cover a range of reading objectives through the promotion of student written book recommendations.
In using this new system we hope to support students in achieving the following literature related goals, while promoting reading school wide.

1. Identify genre preferences. 2. Reflect and report on reading. 3. Justify responses to literature. 4.Read independently. 5. Identify, enjoy and appreciate
books. 6.Actively search out books which are appropriate to interests and learning needs. 7. Use personal reading experiences to form opinions and recommend books.

To participate, students will need to fill in a special form, available in the LRC, and place it in an envelope on the inside cover of the book they are recommending. It's that simple.
Book Blurbs will continue all year long. The forms and envelopes are available at the circulation desk for student use. A copy of the form has also been placed on the Library websites, for easy access from home.

Of course its easy to think up a new program. Promoting it and maintaining momentum is, of course, another story. In the Primary School Book Blurbs is running initially as a competition for students, which has placed it in the limelight. Speaking to students about it in assemblies and through daily messages, as well as encouraging them to use the system when taking out or dropping off books, should hopefully help as well.

Our Non Traditional Library

2010-01-19T01:46:00.000-08:00

Our Learning Resources Centre/Library could never be called quiet or traditional. There is always something going on and more than likely lots of things going on all at once, and the noise level reflects this. In fact the learning that goes on here is a far cry from that of the regular four walled classroom, and that's just perfect. Our teachers are quite comfortable with this and the students take to it naturally. The facility remains heavily booked each week.

While some directed teaching still takes place during introductions to lessons, the majority of the learning happens out on the floor of the LRC, as individuals and groups supported by their teachers, pursue their various tasks at the iMacs, using laptops, and an array of other digital equipment.

Our latest addition to the library are some very comfy beanbag chairs. It's definitely high on the cool meter to hear the exclamations, "BEAN BAGS"(even from the older ones) and observe the students getting as comfortable as possible, as they embark on the important business of learning.

Scratch Wows (No I Haven't Fallen off the face of the Planet-yet!)

2010-01-18T05:35:00.000-08:00

I have been all over the place, virtually since the Christmas Break ended and haven't had much time to write about it. At least that is the excuse I have been giving myself for my lack of focus in sitting down and reflecting.

I wanted to come back to Scratch for a moment however, and discuss wow moments.,

We finished up our scratch unit just before Christmas with the 7th grade students. These kids really enjoyed their Scratch experience and created some interesting projects to tinker with. The majority of these projects have now been uploaded to the ABCICT Scratch Gallery.

The wow moment with 7th grade was when the kids came in in the second lesson and wanted to get to their projects immediately. It was fantastic to see just how motivated they were, and be able to work closely with them in supporting the range of projects in the works. It was very much a case of students taking what they had learned and moving in their own directions. This lead them to further learning experiences uniquely tailored to their own interests and programming requirements.

Scratch definitely provides for differentiation based not not only the individual's ability, but also personal preferences.

The second wow moment came the day after I introduced Scratch to one 8th grade class. A student came up to me after school to tell me how cool he thought the program was and to ask for help. After the first lesson, he had set himself the task of creating a Mario Bros. type game and was working on movement, jumps, sprite broadcasting and costume changes. Just to clear things up, we worked on creating and editing sprites in the first lesson. We sat together for about 30 min, during which time he eagerly grasped a new set of skills that would place him 2 lessons ahead of the rest of his class. Scratch is a natural when it comes to extension work.

Other wows have occurred in both grades in different ways, but I would have to say that the eagerness with which the kids anticipate working on their projects, combined with the variance in style, and direction that Scratch provides for, are perhaps two of the most notable.

Plans are now in the works for a Scratch extra-curricular class, which will focus on exploration and collaboration on projects. The power here is that students will be teachers as well as learners. .

Diigo Groups for Student Content

2009-12-10T00:37:00.000-08:00

I think everyone would agree that Diigo is great for research, social bookmarking and networking. This week I have found another great use for Diigo. I have started having students bookmark their Prezi Presentations in their class research groups, thereby bringing it all together in one place. This allows members of the group to view each other's work and better yet, allows me to open each presentation up directly from Diigo, as each group gets up to present, without the hassle of logging in and out of different accounts. It also gives me a one stop method for assessing their work without having to deal with emailed links.

The more I use Diigo the more I love it!

Now if I could only find enough time to dig through the other Diigo groups I belong to.

TweetCloud- What are You Tweeting?

2009-11-30T02:16:00.000-08:00

This just came in over twitter from someone you need to follow if you aren't already doing so, Joyce Valenza.

TweetCloud is a useful little Twitter tool that allows you to create word clouds from your tweets, very much in the same way that Wordle creates tag clouds from text. I had a play with it and the results are below.

It would appear that my tweets for a month are a bit video-centric, not exactly what I had expected. The one below is from a year of tweets...Useful Tools and Ideas are the trend, must be all the SimplyBox-ing.

I am now working out ways I can use this tool with my students when they use Twitter for collaborative research. They each have individual accounts through which they could generate their own clouds and display the main topics they are researching. If you have a class Twitter account it would be an interesting way of visualising the content of your Twitter stream with the students who have contributed to its growth. If you can think of any other ways to make this a part of teaching and learning, do let me know.

For now, have a play with TweetCloud. All you need is an active Twitter account.

Wikis as Websites for Libraries-It's not just about the code, is it?

2009-11-28T10:09:00.000-08:00

This morning we held our second Wikis as Websites session of the year for members of the Salvadoran library community and members of ABES, the Salvadoran Librarians association.

Widget Fever

It was great to see everyone again, and they were certainly revved to get back into their wikis. After a brief refresher it became all about the widgets and code. The looks of surprise and then joy on people's faces when they saw not only the variety of useful widgets and ways to embed codes from various online services, took me back about 6 months, when I too caught the widget bug. Of course fantastic websites are not just about the code, but what a hook! Code in the form of widgets is like opening a little door or window to another source or collection of ideas, in an highly engaging manner.

The sheer enormity of of widgets/gadgets/flakes and embedding code out there, for free I might add, is enough to give anyone widget fever.

Today we looked at embedding slideshows, glogs, Librarything and Shelfari book shelves, blogs and rss feeds using widgetbox, youtube videos and Twitter feeds. In the end we could have used at least one more exploratory session, but hopefully participants will maintain their momentum over the next few months.

But there is more!

During the last part of the session our Library Assistant fed back from her Guatemalan Digital Literacy conference experience using Prezi. It was her first time presenting and her first time using Prezi.

What's Prezi?

If you haven't tried Prezi yet...you are missing out on a great interactive presentation tool. Yes it's a web app and yes you can also download your work! Try teaching it to kids, what a fantastic way to get away from the ppt and enforce presentation reform guidelines!

Back to the Conference

Our conference wasjoined by others who had attended in Guatemala. Some joined us in person and others did so virutally using Elluminate. It was the first time I was able to use my Learn Central V-Room with anything larger than a group of friends. It was fantastic and the participants in El Salvador got to listen to and learn from speakers in other areas of the continent as well as those physically present. This was the first such experience for most of the participants and they were thrilled by it.

I am going to break out the V-Room again this school year with our Spanish classes, enabling students and teachers to link up and participate to student presentations in real time.

Is anyone else out there using Elluminate with their kids?

Scratch in KS3

2009-11-24T10:01:00.000-08:00

Photo Courtesy of the Scratch Algebra Learning Network

The 7th and 8th grade are working with Scratch Programing language this school year.
Scratch, was developed by the MIT Media Lab to enable kids 8 years of age and older to create interactive stories, animations, games, music, presentations and art while learning "important mathematical and computational ideas."
When working on Scratch projects, students must use reasoning and problem solving skills while thinking creatively.
The projects can then be uploaded to the Scratch Website to be shared and remixed by others.

The students have taken to it completely. They were taught two new skills at the beginning of each lesson, after first being introduced to the basic needed to get started. At the same time we gave them the freedom to begin developing a project of their choice, and pursue their own interests. At some point in the 2nd lesson they had made their decisions. They began diverging from the basic skills work, choosing their own directions and constructing programs using the blocks in Scratch that they found most interesting. Some of the students are currently creating interactive games while others are working on various types of presentations. The 7th grade will be finished in another week and we look forward to sharing some of this work on the ABCICT Website.

The great thing about Scratch is that it enables kids to learn by trial and error, and analyse their work while studying problems from different angles. It requires them to break down problems by breaking down the program blocks, and enables them to utilse the work of others as models in trying to solve their own programming problems. The Scratch website is full of videos, tutorials, activity cards and projects to use as teaching resources.

My students and I are very pleased to be working with Scratch in ICT. Hats off to the great team at the MIT Media Lab!

Sketchfu

2009-11-10T01:44:00.000-08:00

The kids are really enjoying Sketchfu. It is an online app that allows them to draw a picture and then playback the process, thereby creating an online animation. These animations can be downloaded as pictures or embedded and played back. Be aware however that there are some issues regarding embedding the player in wikispaces and wordpress. You may want to opt for embedding a linked picture instead.

If you have younger kids or teach primary aged students, this may prove to be a powerful storytelling tool. An account is required however.

I am including an example below which my son did the other night.

Learn how to draw cartoons, comics, and anime at Sketchfu!

Getting Hacked-Resolution

2009-11-06T12:20:00.000-08:00

My Twitter account was hacked last week, unknown to me until I finally logged into my email and Tweetdeck. I had taken the week off for half term holidays and was unaware of the problem until 2 days ago. Since then I have changed my password twice and it is hopefully all better now, but I hate the thought of all that spam coming out of my account.

Resolution: I will not allow just any application to use my Twitter password, only the tried and trusted from now on.

My deepest apologies to anyone who was affected by this.

The Day the Internet Went Down!

2009-10-29T01:43:00.000-07:00

Yesterday upon arriving to school, staff members encountered a school without an internet connection. For some it was a moment to rejoice, no more email hammering through the system to deal with and no more computer based admin work to be done. Some of us saw it differently, asking ourselves the question, "How on Earth could we function without it?" Now I am not referring to emails and admin, but digital teaching and learning. I teach ICT and let's face most of my lessons are web based, as well as parked on a wiki or Google Doc. It wasn't so much the lack of access to the lessons, but the resources I very carefully park online to use in my teaching, as well as the web applications I am teaching students to use. Let's face it the Twitter research lesson was going to have to be scrapped!

In the end I opted for having the 8th grade create a story map of sorts, an outline for their upcoming work with Prezi. They actually cheered when I told them the internet was down-go figure. Anyway we pulled some books off the shelves, handed out the paper and they got to it. It was worth it. Each group engaged in a lot of discussion and planning and now has a plan for organising their presentation.

It is not the end of the world when the internet goes down, there are other ways to cope, and other activities which can be done, but my Twitter lesson will still have to take place, even if its a week later, causing a domino effect for all the followup activities-again not the end of the world.

That doesn' t mean I didn't cheer out loud and practically jump out of my chair when Tweetdeck all of a sudden pushed an update through onto my screen. (You know what? I wasn't the only one!)

UN Week-Millennium Goal Videos

2009-10-29T01:20:00.000-07:00

The ABC celebrated UN Week during the last week of October.

For the LRC that meant aiding kids with their Millennium Goal videos and setting up a great display of articles from around the world.

The Videos

As component of their Life Skills work, students across the grades were asked to produce a group video based on one of the UN Millennium goals,. They needed to research the goal, and find a way to get the message out to others, utilising a range of media which may have included:video clips, music, narration and photos.

Some groups opted to do interviews, others found powerful photographs for slide shows, while certain groups chose to record themselves acting out given roles and other decided a screen cast was the way to proceed. Many students chose to search Creative Commons sites for images, others used Google Advanced Search to access information and images. They brought in music to mix into their projects, on their iphones and ipods, brought in videos and photos they prepared at home and made good use of the LRC flip cameras,tripods iMacs when filming live footage and remixing their work.

It was fascinating to observe the students as they chose the digital tools that best suited their vision for the project, incorporating the web fluency and media skills they had learned over the last year or so, while researching and resourcing their initiatives. These students each have a well developed digital toolkit to draw on, one which will increase as the school year progresses.

Research the Web 2.0 Way

2009-10-29T01:17:00.000-07:00

Research plays an important role in the education of students. The development of a research skills program is one of the LRC’s many important objectives for SY 09/20.

This year we have taken advantage of the wide range of Web 2.0 tools available to support and enhance research work with students. Students are learning more about how to search the web efficiently and effectively, while at the same time evaluating the sources they encounter. Web searching and evaluation are now taught utilising the 21st Century web fluency tutorials and hands on challenges, in combination with the pertinent videos from Brainpop.

One of the most exciting developments in research this year is the introduction of Diigo, a powerful social bookmarking application. Diigo enables students to form learning groups and networks, bookmark, tag and annotate web pages online, share their findings and annotations with their research groups, as well as search the bookmarks and annotations of others interested in the same topics.

In the 8th grade Twitter is being used along with the hashtag #abcict to record nuggets of information in 140 characters or less, forcing students to be succinct in their note taking. They are also using Twipic to upload photographs to their Twitter stream. The entire grade can then access the research as part of the #abcict stream. 7th grade used Google Chat to accomplish a similar feat in small groups, and later on this year, some classes will be using Today’s Meet to do the same.

An updated version of Noodlebib is being used to create notecard from these collaborative streams of information, as well as create outlines and citations. The 8th grade presentations based on all this research, will then be constructed and delivered using Prezi, a very exciting web application for delivering dynamic presentations both on and offline.

It’s a fact that the number of powerful web applications that can be harnessed for educational purposes is rising quickly. Educators from around the world are quick to identify those which are relevant to their work and together with students incorporate them as a part of authentic 21st century learning experiences, which are dynamic, meaningful, and often collaborative.

Sharing My Online Comic Creator and Resource Collection

2009-10-25T11:57:00.000-07:00

For a while now I have been compiling a collection of online comic creators. We use ToonDoo heavily in our school and have just recently introduced the kids to Pixton too. They love both apps. and use them a great deal across subjects where storyboarding and storytelling are common activities.

There is more to it however than just creating comics. Tonight I came across a fabulous collection of resources and suggestions on how to use comics in the classroom which I am trying to share as many ways as possible with my PLN and anyone else who is interested. I have included the presentation created by S. Hendy, for you to peruse.

I went through the presentation and added a lot of resources from it to my SimplyBox collection of online comic generators and curriculum based comics. It is a fairly complete collection which I hope will be of use to anyone interested in using comics in the classroom. Please feel free to go through it and use whatever interests you as well as add any comments that would help others to better use the resources.

Tap Into The World Of Comics

View more documents from S. Hendy.

When It All Comes Together

2009-10-22T00:37:00.000-07:00

It was touching! 7th grade was in the LRC this morning to begin work on their Millenium Goal videos. As I walked around talking to them about it and looking at how they were approaching the task, my heart leaped with joy. All the work we have done over the last year or so has really begun to pay off. The kids have built up their digital tool kits and skills to the point where they are able to make good decisions about the applications, equipment and approaches they can take when tackling new tasks.

I found myself thinking, "This is how learning should be, student directed with a high level of engagement."

Today in the LRC, some of the kids were prepping their video in iMovie. some were opening Jing in preparation for a screencast, some were collecting flip cameras and tripods in order to film each other and perform interviews, while others were doing advanced searches in Google for information. The work was collaborative and focussed, yet the approaches all varied.

If you've ever wondered if it will all pay off, if the kids can bring together all that learning and apply it in a meaningful manner, the answer is most definitely yes.

I look forward to sharing some of these mini-projects once they are done.

Backing Up Twitter

2009-10-15T01:41:00.000-07:00

I have decided to jump in with both feet and begin using Twitter for collaborative research in lessons next week. This of course brings with it some new problems which need addressing. I noticed a while ago that Tweets aren't eternal, this didn't bother me too much until I decided I wanted access to older tweets. Now it is a real issue, because I want kids to have access to our class tweets utilising a given hashtag, weeks after the fact. I gather from the different posts I read, that 9-15 days is pretty much the average time they are kept and this itself is relative to the number of tweets etc...

I have done a lot of reading on this today, and I still haven't found a concrete solution to my problem. I tried to sign up with Tweetbackup but had log in issues and later came across the interesting TweetKarma in my travels through the Tweetiverse. I did however place an RSS feed on a query for our hashtag, in my PageFlakes account in the hopes that it will all accumulate there. Naive? Maybe, time will certainly tell. Being the untrusting sort, I am also going to back it up the old fashioned way, copying it all into shared Google doc. That way if in a week's time, when our class meets up again to use the collaborative research we compiled, the older tweets cannot be accessed, I will have a full copy to provide them with.

If anyone out there has a proven solution for this I would be very interested in hearing from you.

RSS

Sharing the Links:Art Apps

2009-10-13T08:50:00.000-07:00

We are very much into using cartoon and animation apps at our school for work across the curriculum, but are we using a variety of apps for other areas of art and design? I think in most cases we tend overlook these areas, especially when working with the older kids outside of Art lessons.

This afternoon I came across a tweet by @aFaizaK of Word Ahead, which lead me to a great post by Mrs Smoke containing a listing of 45 websites for students to use in creating original art online. Some of these apps, I've come across before and use a great deal, most I haven't. I can't wait to try some of these out with the kids! A big thanks to Mrs. Smoke for taking the time to compile the list and sharing it with the world!

Finder Fox Widget

2009-10-03T10:16:00.000-07:00

Now you can make your webpage/blog more interactive for readers. Just place the finder fox widget on your web page and any reader who highlights a word or string of words will be given the choice to tweet them, look them up in Wikipedia, or search them out on Google and Twitter. What a great idea! You can trial it right now as I have added it to this blog.

Reflections on PageFlakes

2009-09-23T00:38:00.000-07:00

Our school is definitely a Google school. We have switched over to Apps and love teaching and learning using all the Google Web Apps that come with our school accounts, as well as with a regular GMail account. Although we have a preference for and utilise everything Google,(within reason) as it applies to educational practice, we recently made the decision to switch from teaching iGoogle this year to PageFlakes . Several things were considered when making the decision, but three areas in particular really swayed the balance:

The Anything Flake allows you to put just about anything on your page, including important links, pictures, text and gadgets and widgets from other sites.

PageFlakes provides a greater level of freedom in designing pages, not only can students choose from different predetermined themes and page designs, and alter colour schemes, they can also easily create their own themes and page designs by using their own imagery.

RSS Feeds can be added to any page, so they can be organised by topics, or placed on a page of their own.

We have taught the kids how to search out feeds and place them on their pages. They are able to add flakes as well as widgets and gadets from other sites, using the Anything Flake, and have created pages for their main subject areas as well as hobbies and interests. They love being able to customise their pages-this is a real hook! The next step will be teaching them how to share their pages and create page casts. The real power here is in the creating of a set of pages from which they can readily access all their accounts, links, and tools.

Our next big PageFlakes project will be to use pages as pathfinders for projects that not only include links and feeds, but also photo galleries, text, audio and more.

Wouldn't it be great to also have the kids collaborate on group pages on given subjects, compiling banks of related resources that they have come come across or created in the course of their work?

It's the mark of a great application, when not only is it extremely useful, but also very difficult t0 get the kids away from it at the end of a lesson!

Live Binders

2009-09-04T13:51:00.000-07:00

This evening Live Binders started following me on Twitter, so I checked them out. Binders are social bookmarking tools that work in a similar way to SimplyBox, but using a binder metaphor and can house pdfs, images, and more as well as links.

One very exciting feature of Live Binders is that they can be embedded on websites etc. Nowyou can have binders of info tucked away as cute little icons on your site. Plenty of potential here.

Main site
http://www.livebinders.com/

digital story telling tools binder
http://www.livebinders.com/play/play?id=2721

Making Connections via Blogs, Facebook, Twitter and Whos.amung.us

2009-09-04T00:16:00.000-07:00

I came across a great blog post by Jeff Utecht this morning on Twitter entitled A Blog Post, a Tweet a Connection. I found it very inspiring and is definitely worth a read.

In this post Jeff describes how easy it is to connect up educators and students from all over by simply using teacher social network connections. The experience he describes is very powerful. Most of us are connected to other educators, via Twitter, blogs, FaceBook, Nings, and more, its just finding ways to make them work for us.

Jeff summarised the content of his post as follows:

"I believe this story shows the power of:1. What can happen when we allow students to be “out there”.
2. What happens when our teachers become networked and can bring that network to their students.
3. That through connections educational possibilities are endless.

On a different note, most of us are pretty fond of our ClusterMaps. It's nice to know whose reading and amazing to see where in the world the readers are located. Well after reading Jeff's post I glanced over at the sidebar and found a whos. amung.us map. It's great! Not only does it show the locations of visitors to the blog, but also displays in real time the locations from where it is being read.

While I was reading the post described above, the El Salvador dot was flashing as wall as another in the states. Two of us in different parts of the world were reading the post at the same time. Upon clicking on the map, more details were available such as how many people were viewing which posts at the time as well as a graph of the last 24 hours of traffic the blog received. Definitely worth following up on!

Prezi

2009-09-01T12:41:00.000-07:00

Are you on the lookout for a presentation application that is just a bit different? If so you may want to check out Prezi.

Prezi allows users to create interactive presentations which can include media and links(although you can't place links on media yet), as well as share/collaborate on the presentations with others. A really great feature is the download option, which allows you to run presentations from the computer and avoid any potenial internet glitches, links not withstanding. Media, text, basically anything in the presentation can be designated as a stop on a predetermined path, and each stopping point zooms in as one arrives at it. This is a great little app. especially for those of use who prefer not to think in a linear fashion straight off, allowing one to plunk down ideas, links and media, later grouping them appropriately, as the ideas develop. Consider the possibilities for brainstorming presentations in small groups! I am definitely going to trial this in one of my teaching groups this year, who have got to be in PowerPoint overload by now!

Note: Three main areas that the Prezi people could develop further are the ability to embed and/or upload presentations, as well as allowing users to link off of objects rather than pasting urls into presentations.

Here is a link to the my first Prezi, which I created as a follow-up for to BLC.

A Comparison of Social Networks

2009-09-01T12:27:00.000-07:00

I came across this comparison by the Centre for Performance Technologies this evening and it is worth looking at. It is a comparison of Facebook, Ning and Elg, which might make you rethink your Ning useage a bit. I still love my ICT Ning and have plenty of plans for its growth in this, its second year of life. I also enjoy the the fact that my Ning accounts all link up with one another. Looking at Elgg however, there appear to be quite a few advantages to it in comparison with Ning. One thing in particular that makes it a attractive is the lack of a 13 or over rule. Certainly for educational institutions this shouldn't be necessary anyway.

Personas-How Does the Internet See YOU?

2009-08-26T00:12:00.000-07:00

Pulled this off of Twitter this morning-Have you ever wondered how you are seen by the internet. Well now you can find out.

'Personas is a component of the Metropath(ologies) exhibit, currently on display at the MIT Museum by the Sociable Media Group from the MIT Media Lab. It uses sophisticated natural language processing and the Internet to create a data portrait of one's aggregated online identity. In short, Personas shows you how the Internet sees you." Source: http://personas.media.mit.edu/

I gave this a shot and watched as Persona dealt with the online data, much of what I know had little to do with me personally, except for my name, the last of which wasn't even mine until I married. Added to the fact that most of my online presence comes under mrsjgarcia, I doubted the information obtained would be very accurate. In other words, I was a bit skeptical. However, the data portrait it generated is actually quite close to what I would have created if I had been asked to do it on my own, knowing what I do about myself. Interesting!persona2

Super Teacher Tools

2009-08-22T14:52:00.000-07:00

I just came across this in the New Tools Workshop Wiki and thought it would be worth sharing with everyone.

http://www.superteachertools.com/index.php#tools

Basically the site allows you to copy your class lists into the system, which creates seating charts that can be rearranged by dragging on screen or randomized for mixing them up and printed out each time. A link is sent to you that you can use each time to modify your class. It can also generate groups of various sizes randomly so that you are saved that task, the other thing the system does is pick names from a virtual hat, which is a great way to vary the students to whom you ask questions in each class. There are plenty more goodies on the site to investigate, but I thought that these tools in particular might be very useful to some of you since it is the beginning of the year. By the way it is free and no registration is required.

enjoy

More on Speaking and 3D Avatars

2009-08-20T13:05:00.000-07:00

We are now using Voki in full force on our LRC and ICT websites to send reminders, updates and homework assignments to kids. Just today one of my colleagues, Carmen is a History teacher. Today she assigned her students the homework of creating a Voki whose job is to answers the question: What is History? Fantastic, what a way to motivate kids to do homework! I really enjoyed viewing these interactive assignments! Take a look!

Here is an example

Get a Voki now!

Just this evening when finishing our latest Voki for the LRC site(which I must say bears a strong resemblance to our Librarian), I clicked the play button and came across Trek Yourself and Svedka Bot Builder..Great fun. I have included some examples below. These two are very easy to use and no account is needed. They can be embedded, sent by email, downloaded, uploaded to facebook etc..Bot Builder doesn't appear to talk, but provides for movement, while Trek Yourself allows you to upload, or text in your message.

My Trek Self

My Bot

My Voki

Get a Voki now!

Collecta for Real Time Searching.

2009-08-18T03:22:00.000-07:00

Collecta is great for current events including rapidly developing issues. It provides plenty of returns, many of the hits being Tweets, blog posts and news updates.

Yet another tool for the digital toolbox!

Prezi

2009-08-17T06:57:00.000-07:00

A colleague of mine just demonstrated Prezi to me(thanks Marc). It is a presentation map construction application, which allows you to define paths, zoom in at given points, add text, links and media. It is great for those of us who don't always work in a linear manner. Get your ideas down, organise them at will, add rich content, define a path, save then present. It's that easy. I not sure about embedding code for the app yet but if it doesn't already exist it may soon.

Hoote Suite, Tweet Deck and Today's Meet

2009-08-11T07:43:00.000-07:00

I am now using both Hoote Suite and Tweet Deck to manage my Twitter accounts. Hoote Suite is a great way to manage all accounts in one place, it was recently updated and is very user friendly. Tweet Deck is great on many levels as well. In addition to ease of tweet and tiny url's, its column layout allows for at a glance access to followers, hashtags, tweets, direct messages, scoops, groups and more. It even has Facebook integration. It has taken me a long time to recognise the power of Twitter and become a regular user. I am now completely sold and my Twitter experience at BLC '09 has only helped to solidify my belief that this little tool can go along way in education. I am now using it as one of the most active areas of my PLN, checking it more often than I do my reader. I use it for broadcasting on webpages and will begin using it as a back channel with some of my classes.

ps: Today’s Meet is a great little back channel app. It works free of charge and is as easy as naming a room and sending out the invites on Twitter or via email. You also have the option to save the room for different time periods ranging from 2 hours to 1 year.

A Great Quote

2009-07-31T04:39:00.000-07:00

Clarence Fisher: Teaching is not rocket science. It's way more complex than that.

BLC'09

My First Voki

2009-07-30T00:10:00.000-07:00

My new talking avatar. I am definitely going to make this a part of how I communicate with my classes! I could even have a different voki for assigning homework, one for announcements, one for cool ideas.... and the kids would eventually know which one to go to for each thing.

Get a Voki now!

Great Places for Class Trips in Second Life

2009-07-29T05:26:00.000-07:00

These were suggested by Bob Sprankle. I have been to Paris 1900 and the Globe Theatre before. Tudor England is good as well as Macbeth. I'll post more on Second Life tomorrow after the workshop.

krstrallnachthUS Holocaust Museum
Land of Lincoln NOAA Weather
Sistine Chapel.
Paris 1900
Museum of Philosophy
Stomach Museum
Sive World
Smithsonian Latino Museum
The Globe Theatre
Renaissance Island

Fiery Ideas Freebies

2009-07-29T04:43:00.000-07:00

This is a collection of great tools for teachers. Registration and login are required.

Check out the timers!

MIT Media Lab

2009-07-28T07:32:00.000-07:00

Some photos from yesterday.

Scratch

2009-07-27T02:34:00.000-07:00

I just had my first play with Scratch at MIT today.

This is what I've come up with so far. I was trying to make an interactive map for students looking at the local community, thinking that older kids could then create their own interactive game to support their work with virtual tours of El Salvador.
Learn more about this project

A fantastic second session. While collaborating on games my partner and I chose to each make our own version our chosen concept, by following the same basic structure. This is powerful. Students can create video casts, animations, games and more using critical thinking skills to present their understanding of concepts across the subjects. There's a lot of potential for integrating scratch instead of just teaching it in ICT lessons.

My First Game

Learn more about this project

project galleries

Learning At the LRC

The Brain on Vidoe Games

Online Gaming

The February Newsletter is Out!

Research Skills-No Excuses

Augmented Reality and SketchUp

The January Newsletter is Out!

When Glitches Lead to Gain

The Fullfillment of a New Comment!

Our Trilingual Radio

Flipping the Learning-Creating Videos in WoW

Our First WoW Meetup

The November LRC Newsletter is Out!

Screencast Tutorials

iPads

Why Not Use Cell Phones in Lessons?

Across Borders

Teaching Reading through Gaming and Teamwork

The October Newsletter is Out!

8th Grade Book Trailers

7th Grade Website Evaluation

Steve Jobs-A Tribute

Steve Hargadon: Live Interview Thursday Sept. 29th on "iPads in th...

The Future of Learning

Theatre Week

The New LRC Blog

Post to Blog

ImageChef

Storymaker

Braindump #2

ISTE Inspiration and Possibilities so Far- List 1

School Year 2010/11

Blackberries and School-Good things Come to Those Who Wait!

ABC Digital Oscars

YouTube's Copyright Video

15 Minutes Well Spent

ICT Project-A Better World- Creating Global Connections through Global Issues

Working with Prezi

Do you want to get their attention? SketchUp is one way.

Digital Storytelling

A Better World Project

QR Codes

Phones in My Classroom By Choice!

When a Lesson Explodes in New Directions

The Latest Shift Happens

United Nations Projects-Millennium Goals and Awareness

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