I’ve just started reading the HORIZON REPORT: K- 12 Edition. This report addresses six technologies that the New Media Consortium suggests are going to be rapidly emerging in our K – 12 environments over the next few years.
My copy of Failure Is Not An Option is getting worn out. This book was a great resource during our first year at DTPS, especially the section on creating mission, vision, values and goals.
I have been receiving emails regarding What’s Working in Schools from the Hope Foundation (who published FNO), and now they have a blog. I’ve added their RSS feed to my iGoogle account and I can more easily keep up with their announcements.
Today was my first look at it, and I like the content. I’m impressed so far, and especially like this post about what the research says students want (aka need) from us in school! We need to do this for all students, but especially for our neediest students, we need to plan well, engage them and teach to their needs, and not give up!
Cheers
I was going through my students’ folders, marking their work, a while back and I came across this picture of me that had been ‘modified’ by one of my students. He took my school picture from this year and used some quick effects to photo shop it.
I like it. It is now going to be my new ‘online persona’….so say hi to the new me!
Cheers
(plus I wanted to test how the blog works when I make a post by email with a picture attached. Note to Self: It works perfectly, embedding the picture at the start of the post!)
I was talking with someone this evening about a structure/technique for discussing Current Events/World Affairs/News Highlights in class. Just putting up the headlines is one way to do it, and can lead to a very basic and entry-level discussion based on the one set of news items/headlines you are looking at.
Another way, and one that might be more engaging for JH kids, could be to use a news aggregator like I am sharing with the following links. If you had a smartboard, you could pop one of these up, and get the kids to stand up and engage in exploring what is on the webpage (updated daily, or more frequently), follow the links, make predictions and inferences, etc. I think kids as young as grade 7 could easily be exploring local or international news at a higher level using tools like this, inquiry thinking and skilled questioning from us.
I really like the following sites, so I thought I’d share them with everyone. Secretly, I’m hoping sharing via blog will help me find more time to visit these myself:
http://marumushi.com/apps/newsmap/newsmap.cfm
(this one is great – choose a country see what the headlines are – choose a headline see what the issues are)
http://www.tenbyten.org/now.html
(visual representations of the headlines – guess what the pictures show)
http://www.newseum.org/todaysfrontpages/
(Newspapers from over 60 countries – this is neat to look at – ask the kids why would the headlines be different?)
http://www.onlinenewspapers.com/
(links to thousands of online newspapers – going to Mexico? Know the headlines before you go)
(the English version of the Arabic News Network)
Cheers!
Since I have been discussing disruptive innovations a lot lately…..I thought I’d post this.
How disruptive is this technology going to be in 2 years? This projector is available NOW, in Canada, for $350 - $400. I want one…..darn gadgetitis.......It is not the brightest LED bulb. But it is also first generation. Instant on/off. Connects to computers, cameras, pda’s, ipods, etc.
2 years from now it will be at least 2 times the quality and 1/3 cheaper. 5 years from now - who knows – but likely half the cost or less and 5-10 times the quality.
What new ways of doing things will we be able to do with technologies like this?
Cheers
GradeGuru (http://www.gradeguru.com/) is a site where you enter your school, the course you are taking, and download the notes you missed by not going to class.
I know I should probably say I would love to have been able to submit my notes for money (as you can do at gradeguru), but actually, I think I would not have had to miss so many episodes of jeopardy if I could have downloaded the notes instead of going to class!
Cheers
One of our four, KEY, provincial/district/school goals is literacy. A very impressive amount of work has been done throughout this year in our district to review the approaches used in our schools to teach and promote literacy. The same committee that undertook that has reviewed what we already do is also providing their recommendations for what we need to (or should do) in the future to help our students develop these skills.
The people from our district who are working on this literacy committee are many of the people I have on my list of ‘gurus’ in the area of literacy and when they talk I try to ‘listen hard’ because I know I will often learn something new. I am not a literacy expert, so I’m not sure if my thoughts are accurate or not, but through all of our recent discussions I am wondering if we might be better off making our focus ‘21st Century Literacies’, or something like that, as a way of addressing our future needs. Comprehensive literacy is a CRITICAL skill that we must develop in our students and I feel that to focus our discussion about reading and writing puts us at risk of excluding those who do not see themselves as teachers of literacy skills. Which all teachers should be.
Perhaps we should be making a district focus on BUILDING KNOWLEDGE, and have specific sub-groups focus on developing 21st Century Skills their areas: i.e. Shop Teachers could focus on reading plans and numerical literacy, SCI/SS teachers could focus on reading texts for main ideas and comparing and contrasting, technology teachers could focus on digital literacies and related skills, math teachers could focus on the development of the language of math, etc.
I’ve been reading a lot of ‘futurist’-type books lately and trying to focus on where we need to go to best prepare our students for the future. Perhaps I’m just worrying too much, but I think we need to start doing things in a NEW and DIFFERENT way in education if we want different results. We know how the brain works and we know how people learn best, let’s start re-designing our system to put what we know into practice.
Or, I’m all wrong and we are just fine proceeding as we always have. But I don’t think so…….we NEVER stop learning to read, so shouldn't we stop using language like that then?
Cheers!
.jpg)
I just finished reading two Malcolm Gladwell books - Outliers and The Tipping Point .Gladwell is an interesting author, and I enjoyed both the content and his style for both books.
Outliers is the story of success...and his position that 'practical'
intelligence is pretty important to one's succes aligns very well with
my thinking. I enjoyed reading about the other circumstances that
contributed to the success of people like Bill Gates, The Beatles and
hockey players. Apparently my birthday is ideal for NHL stardom, how
could I have not made it big?
.JPG)
The Tipping Point was a fascinating conversation on the topic of
creating a buzz about something and turning it into a popular thing on
a broad scale. As a teacher/administrator I can see aplication of
this knowledge when working with teenagers at school on school culture
types of issues...... and I think we already benefit from the
connectors/salesmen/mavens at our school.
Reading this book left me thinking about the need to look at issues we
may face at work a different way in order to reach lasting solutions!
CHEERS!
Sent from my iPod
This is a neat way to help kids present what they know in another way.....
Comic Creator - students can create their own comic strip online: choosing how many frames they would like, add captions, characters, background, speaking bubbles and props, then print out their finished product!
http://www.readwritethink.org/materials/comic/
