Edina Digital Age Learning

Valley View Middle School French Imersion teacher, Heather Palmer created this award winning video, Nos Chemins vers la paix , for the Tel.A.Vision " Vision For America " Contest. Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com Powered by One True Media , Tel.A.Vision.tv allows students to create videos that share their vision for the future. Heather wanted to use this video to promote the Wiki she and her students created for "6 Billion Paths to Peace." On the wiki, Palmer states: Our project was inspired by the program " Six Billion Paths to Peace ", an initiative of the Shinnyo-en foundation. We like the challenge the program offers us: commit to making a difference in this moment, in this day, in this lifetime! Palmer received her award last week at the National Service Learning Conference, in Nashville, TN. Way to go, Heather! NOTE: A few weeks ago while looking at the copyright free music available on the site, I notice a cover of the "Spinal ...

8th Grade students at South View Middle school had the chance to discuss Ernest Hemmingway's Old Man and the Sea today, but not in the traditional way. Language Arts teacher, Tess Bademann had the students chat about it using Moodle. After organizing students into groups of 6-8 within Moodle, she had them log in, randomly dispersed throughout the room, and enter the chat room. Students were given 6 question prompts, but were encouraged to only use those as a starting point for discussion. For the next 90 minutes, the students debated and questioned each other regarding whether the character, Santiago, is a tragic hero, the choice of title, the significance of the lions on the beach, whether Santiago was a success or failure, religious symbolism, satisfaction with the ending, and whether they saw a bit of themselves in the story. Aside from the clickity-clack of keyboards, there wasn't a sound! This exercise allowed students who might be less likely to share in a face to face l...

Someone I follow on Twitter posted a link to PDFtoWord.com , a service that does to PDF documents what Zamzar does for video. You simply upload your .pdf file to the site, enter your e-mail address, and the file is converted and sent as an e-mail attachment. I tested it out with a document that had a table on it, and the table in word was completely editable. Very Nice! Give it a try and let me know what you think! Convert PDF to Word (DOC) Online — 100% Free! tags : pdf , word , converter , doc Posted from Diigo . The rest of my favorite links are here.

I used Slide.com to make this mashup of my experience at Educon... While Slide.com is an easy tool to use, each time the project is viewed, the images rotate to diferent positions. Also, when you roll over the image, sometimes all of the text doesn't show, and it you "accidentally" click on an image, it takes you to the slide.com site. I'll keep looking for a better mashup tool!

Earlier this year, I attended a Webinar on using Podcasts to raise student achievement. The presenters, who taught AP Chemistry, demonstrated how they had taken their lectures, and created a podcast of them for students to view as homework, then used classroom time for hands on activities, and what would be called homework in a traditional delivery method. They have found that students actually performed better with this method. On Tuesday at the TIES KIC meeting , Jenn Nelson from Eden Prairie shared how teachers there were using Jing Pro and SMART Notebook to create "how to" podcasts which they then posted on their Moodle sites for students to review. Further, utilizing the capabilities for Jing Pro to save in Mpeg-4 format, they uploaded the podcasts for students to view via iTunes. Students could then watch them on their iPod anytime. Nelson pointed out that in the analysis of student achievement, students who viewed the demonstrations online, performed better on the asse...

Here are some key takeaways I've had here at Educon in no particular order: There are no public "AP intensive schools" that have moved to Project Based/Student Centered Learning because as Gary Stager said, "AP is the antithesis of a Project based Student centered curriculum. There are some private schools who have recognized that they were turning out students who were good at the Knowledge level but not beyond, and have made the switch, like the Cincinnati Country Day School. There are many programs out their that are working, but replication and scalability are not easy-human capital. The key to creating successful projects is to develop authentic Essential Questions that are standards based. Chris Lehmann is a tremendous educator, and tremendous host! The teaching staff at SLA are fantastic! And their pretty young too!!! There is a huge disconnect between what we believe education should be about and what it is about. Change will not be easy, but worth fighting...

For my last session at Educon, I attended David Warlick's session on Forging Links between Casual Information Practices and Formal Learning Procedures . The nature of information is what's changing. Children in our classrooms are coming from an information experience different from what we had. Next we went to this site for a hands on learning experience . How do we tap in to the energy students have outside school, in our classrooms? The 3 Principles of Learning in the middle of the diagram come from Linda Darling-Hammond. Logical connections can be made between the students outside-the-classroom information experience, and the principles of learning. We then looked at examples of how students experience fits each of the areas, outside the classroom based on our rolls. Students today are... Connected Carrying the communication with them Multiple Perspectives/sources-? Or are they having a transparent conversation? Multi-tasking at the same time.(Medina's "Brain Rules...