July 2007 Blog Posts (196)

International Education Collaboration

Many teachers are becoming aware of the advantages of connecting with

international classrooms. Resources for connecting and facilitating

these exchanges are at best crude. Examples of these technologies are

Twitter, email, Skype, Second Life, IM, wikis, blogs, and GTalk. While

each of these… Continue

Added by Jared on July 16, 2007 at 12:08pm — No Comments

Claymation Camp -- an overview

I am now in my second week of running a claymation-animation camp for middle school students. This is an experiment of sorts and yet, it seems to be going great. The kids are very engaged, the tech seems to be working fine, and parents are thrilled by the excitement of their children in our program.

If you are interested in the plan of action (not quite a curriculum, really) that I have been following, you can view this… Continue

Added by Kevin H. on July 16, 2007 at 11:48am — No Comments

What is OpenLearn...

…and who are OpenLearners? It’s a question that’s been in my head for quite a while now.

Each week I run the stats which show how many people have visited the site overall, and how many have visited LabSpace and LearningSpace in particular. We report how many people have registered on OpenLearn, and how many people who have visited the site have registered on an OU course in the same session. We keep track on the top ten units, dwell time, page…

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Added by Stuart Brown on July 16, 2007 at 6:28am — No Comments

International Teachers Collaborative Database

Today I got the International Teachers Collaborative Database online.

If you go to http://www.oratiobrevis.com and fill out the short survey

I'll be able to get you in touch with a teacher who wants to

collaborate with your classroom. It's also a way for me to keep track

of all the educators I've been getting in touch with.

Even if you think I already have all your information there may be something missing in my records. Also, by putting your information… Continue

Added by Jared on July 15, 2007 at 11:43pm — 4 Comments

Help Wanted

I'm really getting pumped about the whole idea of international collaborations for learning. With many people sharing ideas back and forth about types of projects, one which was suggested that I would like to look into more is the idea of having a wiki. Those of you who have seen my earlier post(s) about collaborating or have read my profile know that the group of children I teach are 4-6 year olds, so most of the work for a wiki would most likely be done by me, unless I can get a teacher of…

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Added by Peter Dawson on July 15, 2007 at 2:31pm — 5 Comments

Hi Classroom 2.0 Community

Hi 2.0 Educators – I am really looking forward to being a member of this community. This has been a year of huge growth for me in the area of technology…not just in the hardware and software areas, but in thoughts, if that makes any sense. My ideas related to the use of technology in the classroom have really expanded since I bought a video iPod in April 07. I fear I have become a podcast junkie, listening on my…

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Added by Laurie Sullivan on July 14, 2007 at 6:49pm — 4 Comments

Online Field Trip Collective

An idea has been proposed by an educator I'm in contact with to share

field trips among classrooms online. The classroom collaboration is

intended to increase student exposure to locations, history, and ideas

otherwise not geographically available. This concept of touring the

real world using… Continue

Added by Jared on July 14, 2007 at 5:42pm — No Comments

Barriers in Technology Integration in the Classroom

As I am organizing my thoughts around my future dissertation, I find myself facinated by the fact that computers have been around for at least 25 years and there is still an issue with technology integration into the classroom. For the past 20 years I have been teaching at the middle school and high school level. Although I started out as an elementary teacher, at the time all the openings were at the middle school and high school level in science and technology. Not many openings at the… Continue

Added by Peggy Soong Yaplee on July 14, 2007 at 2:10pm — 2 Comments

Holy Collaborations Batman!

I'm very excited to see that something may be happening with getting classes together via CR 2.0. I've heard from several people who would like to collaborate and others who are trying to help out. What a wonderful opportunity! Now, of course, comes the hard part as far as I am concerned. The logistics of having 4-6 year olds work on a project. Right now I'm thinking about the sharing of pictures, having some older kids be the scribes to share written work, or (is it possible?) sharing audio… Continue

Added by Peter Dawson on July 14, 2007 at 11:57am — 5 Comments

Leadership, Connecting networks

This is a visual that you can find in the Tutor/Mentor Institute section of http://www.tutormentorconnection.org.

It illustrates how individuals can take actions that connect their network with information which is uses throughout an entire city to solve a problem, change behaviors, elect a favored candidate, etc.…

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Added by Daniel Bassill on July 14, 2007 at 10:59am — No Comments

De-Schooling Society

The 'mass production line' is a great analogy to describe the traditional school system. Students as the raw material and educators as the cogs in the machine working for a bureaucracy. For too long, many schools and universities have operated like this: farms and factories that produce clones of a pre-determined specification, fit for society.

It is refreshing to consider an educational system that is not bound by four walls. Learning can happen by anyone about anything, anywhere and… Continue

Added by Chad Outten on July 14, 2007 at 8:52am — 5 Comments

Future of Education

Traditionally, education has been an entity, a system, a learning process that students undergo, or all or a combination of these things. Albert Einstein was once quoted as saying:

"Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school".

In modern terms, education today is about learning as a life-long experience, not simply a process that students endure for a period of their lives.

Future learning requires deconstructing traditional views… Continue

Added by Chad Outten on July 14, 2007 at 8:50am — 1 Comment

Looking for a play to do at your school?

I wrote two plays while I was directing theater at Inman Kansas and I'm giving away production rights to them for this school year. They were written for the high school level but have been done in various community theaters. I've added Lulu links below where they can be downloaded for free, so if you're looking to save $$ they might be worth a look. What's my motivation? Well a play really isn't alive unless it's being produced and I love to come and see these on stage whenever I can. One of… Continue

Added by Kevin on July 14, 2007 at 7:45am — No Comments

Working toward a better way..

This last week was exhausting, the kind of exhausting that results in sleeping well. I will have to mark this summer as the summer of charter schools and deep thinking in general because I've had the amazing opportunity to work as a facilitator with several of them. The approach and goals of these schools vary but at the end of the day they all seek to educate kids in new, fair and innovative ways. They all want to change their corner of the educational world and so far they have all wanted to… Continue

Added by Kevin on July 14, 2007 at 7:03am — No Comments

Thinking, learning, and language

One of my former professional pursuits involved field research in the western highlands of Guatemala, investigating some of the causes of the decline of a Mayan language. I had to learn a bit of the language myself, and made recordings of conversations to document the language. I just uploaded a 90 second clip of one of those conversations to the music/podcast frame on the left side of my page in Classroom 2.0.

In my blog… Continue

Added by Tom Hemingway on July 14, 2007 at 3:13am — 2 Comments

No monopoly on good ideas

Harold Jarche's recently posted

some interesting thoughts about the differences between Social Media

sites and LMS. To me, though, the fundamental issue has to do with

innovation. One of the fundamental premises of LMSs (or other ERP

systems for that matter) is managing access privileges. Professors

have certain rights to modify or work within the LMS, administrators

(deans, registrars, etc.) have other rights, and… Continue

Added by Jonathan Edson on July 13, 2007 at 9:45am — 2 Comments

What is the question?

(cross posted from my school blog)

"How will you incorporate information literacy skills, such as evaluating and comparing the quality of sources, effective and efficient searching for information, and issues of copyright and plagiarism into your

teaching?"

This is the question I…

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Added by Elizabeth Davis on July 12, 2007 at 9:18pm — 1 Comment

Student Project PageCast

Launched our student ICT Pacesetters PageCast today. A great Web 2.0 tool for collaboration, tutorials, calendar and to do stuff. All members (staff and students) can edit the pagecast a new innovation in the webtop, PageFlakes. You can follow our progress at http://www.pageflakes.com/gmcne4/12076044…

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Added by Garry McNeilly on July 12, 2007 at 8:08pm — No Comments

Stormy

It was a cold and stormy night.... (just practising)

Added by Quentin Hordern on July 12, 2007 at 1:23am — 1 Comment

forgotten population?

So I'm looking over the Kansas Children's Service League site tonite perusing the photos and descriptions of kids who are needing adoption. I used to work in a boys' home, teaching day school and generally getting a TERRIFIC education about the "system."

What I'm noticing is nearly every single one of the kids cite their favorite classes as PE, Art, Computer, or some other physically active class. A scattered few say math or science.… Continue

Added by Ginger Lewman on July 11, 2007 at 9:16pm — 2 Comments