Teachers need to develop THEIR critical-thinking skills as much as students!
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
ISTE 2010: Session: Howard Rheingold: Critical Thinking while Exploring the Web
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
ISTE 10: Tuesday Session: Google Wave

Replies that people make create new "Blips" on the Wave. By Control-Clicking on the second wave in your list, you can have 2 waves open at a time, then by closing the minimize button on the search panel, you can see both Waves side by side.
Monday, June 28, 2010
ISTE 2010: Session: #Tweet, #Learn, #Lead

- Do you want links to resources?
- Ideas for the classroom?
- Conversations about topics?
- It is entirely acceptable to unfollow someone who isn't tweeting, or isn't giving you good information.
- It is entirely acceptable to block someone from following you. (I have had to do this when obvious spammers have started following me.)
If you want to use Twitter for learning, you need to carefully choose who to follow, carefully choose who not to follow, and carefully choose who to engage.
This is YOUR network. YOU need to Own it! Follow people smarter than you!Follow people who can be leaders for you.
ISTE 2010: Monday Session 1: Teaching the Digital Generation: A New Face For Learning

Saturday, June 26, 2010
ISTE 2010: Edubloggercon Session 5: Students Redefine School

- High Speed Connection
- Tool of Choice
- Time of Day
- Developing a PLN for students
To say "I got an "A", doesn't mean as much as "this is what I've done and this is how I've demonstrated my learning."
ISTE 2010: Edubloggercon Session 4-Web 2.0 Smackdown!

- Mark Wagoner shared Jumpcut, a tool that allows you to keep up to 40 clippings and then retrieve them in order to past how you want
- Textexpander-Allows you to type a short phrase and it will expand it for you.
ISTE 2010: Edubloggercon Session 3-Best Practice in a 1:1 Setting

- The concept of 1-to-1 was favorable (teachers, students, parents).
- Many technical/hardware/connectivity issues were encountered during the school year. These issues greatly hindered teaching and learning activities both at school and home. So much so that it is impossible to determine the extent to which the goals of the pilot were met.
- Teachers’ collaboration with their job-alikes was negatively impacted by the laptop pilot.
- Technology support and integration support were understaffed.
- Students’ technical skills were reported to have grown by teachers, parents, and students themselves. Teachers felt students’ skills were overestimated at the beginning of the year. Many pilot students were missing basic computing skills (file management), which impacted curriculum.
- Overall, students liked having laptops to use at school and at home.
- A little over 50% of students polled used their own computers at home instead of their issued laptop
Based on this information and the lack of funds to expand the program in the present form for next year, we have developed the following plan for year 2 of the pilot.
- We will distribute the laptops onto carts for use at both buildings.
- The district will purchase a limited number of netbooks that may be checked out in the media center for students to use at home. This check-out will require parent permission and the signing of a damage waiver.
- The district will increase the number of wireless access points in both middle schools
- The district will develop an infrastructure that will allow students to bring personally owned devices to use for their learning.
- The district will continue to train teachers to leverage anytime, anywhere learning strategies in their instruction.
- Students who were part of this years pilot will have the ability to continue using a personal device for their learning.
We feel that this proposal will continue to assist us with meeting the goals of the 1:1 Laptop Learning Pilot:
- Enhance personalized learning
- Expand learning beyond the school walls
- Develop 21st Century Skills
- Improve student engagement
- Maximize the district's resources of time and talent
- Computer goes home
- Just in time tech support
- Teacher's perception of their personal professional development and support
ISTE10: Edubloggercon Session 2: Student Blogging

By allowing students to keep the blog as their own, it can be used as a portfolio for others to see what they are about as a learner.
Wouldn't it be great if a district gave a student their own domain name as a graduation gift?!
ISTE 2010: Edubloggercon Session 1-Crap Detection in Student Research

- What is being said?
- Who is sharing the message?
- Why is it worthy of my attention, does it fit my purpose?
"Great readers ALWAYS read w/the writer in mind & great writers ALWAYS write with/the reader in mind! Do we model that? "
Friday, June 11, 2010
9th Grade Service Learning Projects
Students in Claude Sigmund's 9th grade Government Class recently completed service learning projects. Students were asked to come up with a project that they were passionate about, and answer the following questions:
1) Why do you care about this issue?Students independently made contact with the organizations, journaled about their experiences and interviewed experts on their issue. Some created movies, some blogs, Web sites, and some did a combination of both. Below are a few that were created for public consumption.
2) What is the root cause/underlying problem?
3) Research your issue. Find 2 good articles to inform you on this topic. Write a 1 page description of how the information from these articles impact how you would interact with this issue. Use specific quotes, statistics from the articles and other pertinent pieces of information.
4) What are some resources/organization that can help you interact with this issue and/or accomplish your goal? Make sure you include contact information such as Names, addresses, phone numbers, web address.
5) What are potential projects you could do to affect and/or impact this issue (2-3 ideas)
a. Name of project idea
b. Basic outline/timeline of proposal (paragraph)
c. Impact? How will your actions impact the people/ community surrounding the issue?
Service Learning project where students volunteered in a English as a Second Language classroom.
Service Learning project dealing with homeless children and music.
Government Service Project - Home
Service Learning project on the Crisis Nursery
Home (Abbott Northwestern Hospital Volunteering)
Service Learning Project on volunteering at Abbott Northwestern Hospital and what the students learned about the General Assistance Medical Care program. This project includes an interview with State Representative Keith Downey.
Posts about Volunteering (Dakota Woodlands Volunteering)
Service Learning for a short term housing facility for homeless women.
Movie - Homelessness Service Project
Service Learning project on Homelessness. The blog posts here are very good.
I think this project is a great example of authentic student learning and how technology can be used to expand that learning to a broader audience. It's a great example of what is working in public education!
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.