Matt's Page on Classroom2.0

Hi Matt. I found you when I was looking for a voicethread partner. I teach 4th grade in Kansas. I love incorporating web 2.0 tools into the classroom. We blog and podcast. I'm introducing skype and twitter for the next year. Do you know of anyone who'd like to collaborate on an activity or two? Let me know your thoughts. Thanks.

Hey Matt,

Our Brainyflix video contest just ended, and I wanted to thank you for helping us get the word out. We got 800 submissions from across the country!

That said, MIT was really happy with the results and will let us run another contest, so we're going for it! But this time, we're gonna have kids create Brainypics flashcards - which are images and sentences paired up with a one of our SAT/ACT words. The contest ends May 22nd, and there'll be iTunes and a cash prize like last time. To boot, we'll double the payout if the kids can hit a certain goal. More details at brainyflix.com/main/contest_rules.

Do you mind passing my message along to your HS colleagues again?

Thanks,
Jack

Hey Matt,

We've been trying to come up with other tools to help students, and one feature we are thinking about adding to BrainyFlix is a "vocab picture flashcard". It is... exactly what it sounds like. (We should come up with a better name). You can check it out here: http://www.brainyflix.com/flashcards/.

This isn't a publicly advertised link because we want to test things out with some lead users first. I thought you might be a good person to give it a spin given your tech leanings.

Please lemme know if it's of interest to you and feel free to circulate to some students. We'd love some feedback, both good and bad.

Thanks,
Jack

Hey Matt. Thanks for the advice and the support. I was just looking into some of the other teachers' concerns, and I didn't have a good answer other than, "I feel like kids will know better." Look forward to seeing your kids' videos :]

Hi Matt. I was wondering if you and your students would be interested in participating in a nationwide SAT Vocab Video Contest @ MIT university. If not, perhaps you have some educator contacts you could direct me to. You can view contest details at BrainyFlix.com Please let me know. Thanks!

Hello,

I'm sending out messages to everyone I know right now, and this virtual Ning network is no exception. My name is Andy Pethan. I am a 21 year old student from Olin College of Engineering. I am a part of a group of 6 Olin students (near Boston) who is taking a year off to pursue our interests in education, entrepreneurship, design and technology, bringing us to the logical project of a business that designs collaborative software for schools! I found you in a search for "middle school", and since our project is specific to middle schools, I thought you might be interested. Our project is called AlightLearning, and this is our "short" project description:

We are working under the assumption that within ten years, the landscape of modern education will have fully integrated what we now define as new classroom media and tools: video, online collaboration, open source curriculum, and internet-based software. We hope to pioneer a web software tool that acts as a platform for this new media, bringing the power of the web and its tools to students, teachers and parents in a secure, comfortable and innovative environment. More importantly, and unlike many of our competitors, our software will empower teachers to better integrate higher level thinking skills, individualized learning, goal setting, reflection, and effective feedback and evaluation. Our goal is to have our free software at a pilot middle school by April 15th, 2008, continuing to develop and coordinate with our users to create a product that other schools and individual teachers will want to use to improve their students' learning in and out of the classroom.

Our team is currently trying to win an idea competition on Ideablob.com You can find us at http://ideablob.com/3975. We would love your support in the form of a vote within the next couple days, but more importantly we'd love your feedback and comments. Our description on Ideablob is short, and even the one above hardly gets at many of the issues we would like to take a stab at solving, but at least it's a start. Note that winning this contest will raise $10,000, a large and useful sum of money for a web-based company running on “sweat equity” and minimal costs.

Feel free to email me back, post on my profile, check out alightlearning.com, or do anything you like!

Thanks,
Andy Pethan
rockychat3@gmail.com

Matt, how does your school get around blocking of ning? Our IT man said if he unblock ning it will unblock facebook and my space. Our school doesn't want them unblocked. Brad Haas

Matt
Read lots of comments avbout your good resources about web 2.0 in classroom
Can you tell me where I can read posts - Is it twitter / edublogs
Can I get links - Ta

Matt
Are you interested in a collaborative project.
I responded to your dgi skill comment and then read it was Nov 2007 - I'm in Australia and I'd ove to send something to your classes
Jo