Tuesday, September 28, 2010

I've Seen the Future, and it is NOW

Ever have that moment where you're so excited over a new discovery that you can't stop your brain from exploding? When the possibilities seem endless? That's how i felt upon an initial look at the following web based way of categorizing and organizing sites or favourites online.

Check it out for yourself...here's the original message below from the source i got it from.

This is a new take on bookmarking. I think it has considerable merit and is easier than using deli.icio.us or Diigo in the first instance. Here is what they say about themselves:

LiveBinders is your 3-ring binder for the Web:

•Collect your resources
•Organize them neatly and easily
•Present them with pride
•Best of all, it’s free!“
Check out bookmarking with Livebinders.

Monday, September 27, 2010

Social Media Madness

Take a look at this article from Education Week and see how social networking is fitting into classrooms ... travel blogs, Facebook updates for school events, and Skyping with kids in different states on collaborative projects. These technologies and their proven power in the education experience are converting a lot of naysayers as administrations begin to see digital tools in action, and the positive ways kids respond to them.


To see the original source of the article, click here.

At New Milford High School in New Jersey, the school’s official Facebook page keeps its 1,100 fans updated on sports events and academic achievements. Students who traveled to Europe this spring for a tour of Holocaust sites blogged daily about their experiences, and received comments from all over the world. Other students have used the video voice service Skype to talk to their peers in states like Iowa for school projects.

For Principal Eric C. Sheninger, the micro-blogging tool Twitter has become his mainstay for professional development as well as school promotion. Through Twitter contacts, he formed a partnership with a company that donated technology equipment and training to the school, and he linked up with CBS News, which brought national exposure to the high school’s programs.

“I used to be the administrator that blocked every social-media site, and now I’m the biggest champion,” Sheninger says. “I’m just someone who is passionate about engaging students and growing professionally, and I’m using these free tools to do it.”

Just a few years ago, social networking meant little more to educators than the headache of determining whether to penalize students for inappropriate activities captured on Facebook or MySpace. Now, teachers and students have a vast array of social-networking sites and tools—from Ning to VoiceThread and Second Life—to draw on for such serious uses as professional development and project collaboration. Educators who support using social networking for education say it has become so ubiquitous for students—who start using sites like Webkinz and Club Penguin when they are in elementary school—that it just makes sense to engage them this way.

Though teachers and students are now pushing learning beyond the borders of the classroom through social networking, that move also comes with hurdles, including the fact that many schools still block access to such sites within their walls. School officials must also confront the uncertainties and questions surrounding privacy issues, proper management, and cyber security when they open their doors to social-networking sites.

But it’s a world that some educators are realizing students feel at home in and is unlikely to disappear. A study by the Washington-based Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project released early this year found that 73 percent of Americans ages 12 to 17 now use social-networking websites, up from 55 percent in 2006.

“Social networking is not going to go away,” says Steve Hargadon, the creator of the 42,000-member Classroom 2.0 network on Ning, a popular site among educators. ("Educators Eye Ning’s Move to Pay Model," this issue.) He’s also a social-learning consultant for the ed-tech company Elluminate, based in Pleasanton, Calif.

“These are so powerful in terms of learning,” Hargadon says of such tools.

In some schools, social networking has changed the way educators teach and students learn, says Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano, the 21st-century-learning specialist at the private, K-8 Martin J. Gottlieb Day School in Jacksonville, Fla.

In January 2009, Tolisano launched her “Around the World With 80 Schools” project. The goal was to introduce her school’s students to peers in countries around the globe. She built a social-networking site using Ning for teachers from all countries who wanted to participate, eventually attracting 300 members.

Tolisano says she sets up a meeting between classes using Skype. Students prepare a list of questions (What’s the weather like there? How big is your town or city? What continent are you on?) and chat with students in Canada, Finland, New Zealand, and Spain, among a long list of others.

The Florida students also have different jobs to do during the call. One might be a photographer, documenting the meet-and-greet. Others place the location of the class they’re talking with on a Google map. Still other students might serve as Twitter “backchannelers,” who send out tweets—the short messages Twitter is designed to convey—as the live event is happening. Classes even added “fact checkers,” who go back to make sure the information provided is accurate.

One group of Gottlieb students had just read a book about Orca whales, Tolisano says, and wanted to know more, so they contacted a class in British Columbia, where whale watching is a common pastime. Within a week, the British Columbia students hopped on a boat and shot video of a pod of Orcas, which they sent to the students in Florida, Tolisano says.

“It creates a global awareness that there is a wider world out there and that we are not alone,” Tolisano says. “They find it’s just as easy to collaborate with a class in England as with the class next door.”

In addition, Skype is so simple to use that just about any teacher can typically handle it with a few minutes of training and minimal equipment. It’s nearly as simple as dialing the phone, but on the computer.

Social networking can mean using ready-made platforms like Ning or Facebook, but it can also be about networks that schools create specifically for their students. Project K-Nect, a grant-funded program that uses smartphones as teaching tools in a handful of North Carolina school districts, allows students to instant-message their peers and teachers with questions on math homework at any time of the day or night. Students can also post questions and answers to school math blogs, where a student struggling with algebra could find several classmates willing to walk him or her through a problem or even post video of the best way to solve it.

“The idea that kids would post blog items on solving linear equations was treated as a laughable concept” by the adults before the project launched, says Shawn Gross, the managing director for Digital Millennial Consulting, an educational technology firm based in Arlington, Va., that oversees Project K-Nect. “The first week we had 75 students post videos on solving linear equations.”

Social networking among students has become one of Project K-Nect’s most popular features, he says.

At New Milford High School, it was the idea of keeping in touch with parents that first prompted Principal Sheninger to look into Twitter during the last school year. That first foray changed his professional life. After tweeting to parents for a few months, he began to reach out to other educators and collaborate. “At that point, the way I used social media” metamorphosed, he says. “I used it to look for new ideas and new resources, to forge new relationships, and as a means of public relations.”

But Sheninger found his students weren’t as entranced by Twitter as he was. In fact, the Pew study bears that out: It found that only 8 percent of teenagers online say they ever use Twitter. The Pew study found that 37 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds were using Twitter, the largest percentage of any age group. Members of New Milford’s student government suggested Sheninger create a Facebook page for the high school instead. In April, the school site was born.

While students haven’t become enamored with Twitter yet, it has become a hot spot for educators to find professional development and resources. One of the most popular types of educator events on Twitter are “EdChats”—one-hour conversations that take place every Tuesday around a particular topic. The chats are the brainchild of several educators, including Thomas Whitby, a co-creator of a 3,700-member Ning site called The Educator’s PLN, for “professional-learning network.”

Social networking is allowing teachers, who often feel isolated in their classrooms, to revolutionize the way they connect with others, says Whitby, a former English teacher who is now an adjunct professor of education for secondary English at St. Joseph’s College in New York City.

Teachers are “finding out about a whole wide range of options beyond what is done in their own building,” he says. “People are trying more things based on recommendations from teachers around the world.”

They can get those recommendations every Tuesday at 7 p.m. Eastern time during EdChat. Moderators choose a topic, and for an hour educators everywhere can ask questions and chime in. All chat contributors “hashtag” or label their comments with “#edchat,” to make sure they appear on a Twitterstream. The event was so popular that creators had to set up an EdChat for earlier in the day (starting at noon Eastern time) to accommodate international teachers in differing time zones.

A recent EdChat tackled alternatives to traditional grading. Some of the comments, limited to Twitter’s 140 characters per tweet, included a suggestion for rating creativity and innovation. One tweet mentioned a pilot program evaluating students on individual learning goals. Someone else asked, if a student is “working at 100% of his ability and is failing, do we grade on achievement or ability?”

Whitby says that after the chats, which sometimes receive more than 2,000 tweets in an hour, many educators discuss the topics in greater depth on their blogs.

Steven W. Anderson, an instructional technologist at Clemmons Middle School in the 52,000-student Winston-Salem/Forsyth County school system in North Carolina, says social networking is revolutionizing the way teachers improve their skills.

“In the past, professional development has been so formal and rigid. You go to these events scheduled by the district because this is what they think you need,” says Anderson, an EdChat moderator. “With social networking allowing teachers to connect one-to-one and one-to-many, they have the professional development that they really desire.”

In fact, Ning, a social-networking platform, is full of sites dedicated to different specialties—everything from geography to teaching English as a second language or first-year teachers.

On Twitter, Anderson says, he’s constantly being pointed to different Web sites and applications that can aid teachers. And if a teacher has a question or needs a recommendation for a site, Twitter can help with instant suggestions.

“Twitter is like a giant conference that’s on all the time,” Anderson says. “I always know I can find something I can use. That’s huge.”

Teacher Shelly Terrell, who writes the blog Teacher Reboot Camp, says she’s found value in different types of social-networking sites when it comes to professional development. Terrell, who is currently teaching in Germany at the German-American Institute, also holds weekly field trips into the virtual world of Second Life for teachers new to the site.

“I take the teachers to a safe ground,” she says. “If you’re on your own in Second Life, you might end up where you don’t want to be as an educator.”

In Second Life, a virtual world where users interact as avatars, or electronic representations of themselves, the North Carolina Community College System has developed an island for teachers to show them how to work with audio and video. Though Terrell can’t visit that world with her students, since users are required to be at least 18 years old, she says the virtual field trips can be beneficial for teachers, particularly in “experiencing” other countries.

If she takes teachers to Second Life’s virtual Venice, for example, they can ride a gondola, meet people speaking Italian, and observe the way people dress and the culture.

But many educators who see the value in social networking face significant obstacles to incorporating it into their school days.

Both Twitter and Facebook are blocked by many school computer networks. Even Sheninger, who has had great success withhis school’s official Facebook page, says the site still isn’t accessible from inside the school’s walls.
“One thing I ran into a lot in the U.S. was filtering or blocking,” says Terrell. To use some social-networking sites or tools, “I had to get the technology director and let him know specifically what I was using it for, and it was a long process getting sites unblocked.”

In addition, some district officials remain skeptical that such social-networking tools really benefit education, worried that they just open the door to Internet-security problems and the possibility of cyberbullying.

In April, the principal of Ridgewood, N.J.’s Benjamin Franklin Middle School, Anthony Orsini, sent out an e-mail to his students’ parents asking them to bar their children from using social-networking sites to prevent online bullying. “There is absolutely no reason for any middle school student to be a part of a social-networking site,” Orsini wrote in the e-mail.

Also in April, Utah’s 68,300-student Granite school district barred teachers and students from “friending” each other on Facebook. And Louisiana state law requires all school districts to document every electronic interaction between teachers and students through a “nonschool-issued device, such as a cellphone or e-mail account.”

But it remains unclear what all of that means for social-networking tools and sites being used for purely educational purposes.

Montana Miller, an assistant professor of popular culture at Bowling Green State University, in Ohio, and a Facebook expert, says not only have educators put their careers at risk with inappropriate exchanges with students on sites like Facebook, but shealso believes it’s not the sort of place for any educational exchange.

“Facebook is too much of an intrusion into students’ personal and social lives for educators to be using it as an educational method,” she says. “I’m not against collaborative, online education with students, but I am against merging their personal home, private family world with something that is required for a class activity. Millions of things can go wrong.”

Schools also need to pay close attention to federal laws like the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998, or COPPA, which seeks to protect children’s privacy and bars most children under 13 from participating in many websites. Education officials should also consider other federal laws like the Children’s Internet Protection Act, or CIPA, which requires schools to provide Internet filtering to prevent access by students to offensive content over the Internet, and the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, or FERPA, which protects the privacy of student information.

In fact, most social-networking sites like Facebook and Ning require users to be at least 13 to participate. That’s why private wikis or blogs or other social-networking tools designed for school use can often be more beneficial in such situations, says Terrell, the teacher and blogger. For example, she often uses a tool called VoiceThread with even her youngest students. That free service allows users to leave voice comments about pictures, video, or drawings, and it enables users to doodle or draw on the screen as they comment.

In Terrell’s case, she had her kindergartners create a book in VoiceThread with a kindergarten class in Turkey. The youngsters drew “pages” and then spoke into a microphone to record parts of the story.

“Parents are very big on privacy, and this can be private,” Terrell says of VoiceThread. “It gives the teacher control in terms of filtering.”

But Terrell says fears about how to proceed with social-networking sites and tools should not prevent educators from using them.

“If you don’t take that golden opportunity to teach students about the responsibility of using these things, you lose a teachable moment,” she says. “If schools block them, they’re preventing students from learning the skills they need to know.”

Saturday, September 25, 2010

CESA in Wisconsin

Wisconsin is so 21st Century!!! Read the article here.

"The CESA in Wisconsin is definitely "getting it right"—this regional education service agency is making a strategic move toward fostering 21st century learning in their schools. Read about the changes that they are making and why they are important. "

- originally posted by Ross Crockett

Friday, September 24, 2010

Google Forms

Here's a link to a post about Google Forms. Similar to survey form web based software like Survey Monkey, Google Forms is a great tool to use in the Data Management strand, as it "allows students and teachers to create, collate, and process data in a simple and straightforward manner."

Check out the link, then check out Google Forms.

Thursday, September 23, 2010

Order Your Census Teacher's Kit

Canada's Next Census: Statistics Canada's 2011 Census Teacher's Kit is designed for grades K-12. Each kit contains eight cross curricular activities that are classroom-ready and have been tested to meet provincial curriculum
standards.
Subject areas covered include language arts, mathematics, science, social studies, geography, history, visual arts, and ESL, allowing students to understand how the information collected in a census can be used.
The 2011 Census Teacher's Kit is available free to Educators. Quantities are limited. Reserve your kit online at http://kit.census2011.gc.ca/ or by email at
censuskit@statcan.gc.ca.
Delivery of the Census 2011 Teacher's Kit will begin in
September 2010.

Electronic (PDF) versions of the kits will be available for download starting October, 2010 at http://www.census2011.gc.ca/ .

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

GEDSB ASPDO

Here are some of the math workshops offered in the After School Professional Development Opportunites from Grand Erie District School Board for the 2010-2011 school year.

Numeracy Block: Planning Three-Part Lessons
Elementary Teachers
E-Centre ID: 9056
Oct 18, 2010 4:00-5:30 pm Joseph Brant Learning Centre

OR

E-Centre ID: 9057
October 20, 2010 4:00 -5:30 pm Waterford District High School

Details:
This session will examine planning for an effective numeracy block, with emphasis on developing three-part
problem-solving lessons. Participants will have an opportunity to work on planning their own threepart
lesson, and are asked to bring their own resources for this planning (e.g., text Teaching Guide
such as Math Makes Sense, Effective Guides, Supersource Guides, professional resources such as Van
de Walle and/or Burns, Mathematics curriculum document).

Assessment: Developing Rich Tasks
Elementary Teachers
E-Centre ID: 9048
February 7, 2011 4:00-5:30 pm Joseph Brant Learning Centre

OR

E-Centre ID: 9049
February 9, 2011 4:00-5:30 pm Jarvis Public School

Details:
Participants in this session will examine the process of rich task creation, with a focus on differentiation
and higher order thinking. Participants are asked to bring current plans, lessons, tasks or ideas that will
provide the opportunity to apply their new learning in an authentic context. Please bring any relevant
curriculum and support documents.

Numeracy Block: Incorporating the Process Expectations
Elementary Teachers
E-Centre ID: 9058
February 23, 2011 4:00 -5:30 pm Joseph Brant Learning Centre

OR

E-Centre ID: 9059
February 24, 2011 4:00 -5:30 pm Waterford District High School

Details:
This session will examine lesson-planning that builds students' mathematical understanding through the
development of the process expectations, with particular emphasis on problem-solving and
communication. Participants will have the opportunity to work on developing lessons that build upon these
process expectations, and are asked to bring their own resources for this planning (e.g., text Teaching
Guide such as Math Makes Sense, Effective Guides, Supersource guides, professional resources such as
Van de Walle and/or Burns, Mathematics curriculum document).

Early Numeracy
Kindergarten Teachers
E-Centre ID: 9089
March 21, 2011 4:00 - 5:30 pm Nipissing University (Room 002)

OR

E-Centre ID: 9090
March 23, 2011 4:00-5:30pm Jarvis Public School

Details:
Exploring developmental stages, scaffolding and teaching strategies, school-home connections, and
activity based learning; math read aloud books and teachable moments. ...MAKE AND TAKE

Making Math Accessible
Elementary Teachers
E-Centre ID: 9103
March 28, 2011 4:00-5:30pm Joseph Brant Learning Centre

OR

E-Centre ID: 9104
March 30, 2011 4:00-5:30 pm Waterford District High School

Details:
This session will focus on creating a rich mathematics program that facilitates success for all learners.
Participants will examine strategies and tasks that can provide an entry point for all learners.

101 ways to Use The Learning Carpet
Rediscover your school’s Carpet
Elementary Teachers
E-Centre ID: 9100
April 27, 2011 4:00 - 7:00 pm Joseph Brant Learning Centre
Details:
This workshop is a fast-paced, interactive programme that will introduce innumerable and creative ways to
use The Learning Carpet. Teachers will actively experience concepts in all five strands of mathematics.
Practical strategies for map and globe skills and basic phonemic awareness, will also be shared using the
grid. The Learning Carpet, is a teaching tool that is used to kinesthetically teach primary/junior children
math and language concepts.
Each GEDSB school (one Kindergarten teacher per building) was provided with training on the Learning
Carpet and received a carpet in 2005.
Light dinner provided.

Ontario Premier Questions Safeguards on Standardized Testing

Hmmm...



Click the link to read the article from The Globe & Mail.

Friday, September 10, 2010

KeyMath Response

Thank you to those who attended my KeyMath workshop. Please take a moment to fill out the feedback survey:



Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Guided Math workshops available in October


Thank you to Candy B. who passed on this info about a Guided Math workshop being offered from the Bureau of Education & Research. Here is a minimal description below...

Barbara Blanke shares a variety of easy-to-use guided math techniques, including how to create, set up, implement, and manage small guided math groups using your current math curriculum. Whether you are teaching in a self-contained classroom, a math classroom or a resource program, you will find Barbara’s ideas practical, innovative and easy to apply.

There will be an in-person presentation in Hamilton on October 27th and one in Brampton on October 26th.

If you would like more details, there is a flyer that Candy gave me which i can copy for you. Just give me an e-mail or leave a comment here on the blog.

For more detailed information from the BER website, click here.

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Culture of improvement takes hold in schools - thestar.com


An article from today's Toronto Star regarding some background to the state of education in Ontario today, written by Dave Cooke, who was Ontario’s minister of education from 1993 to 1995.

Culture of improvement takes hold in schools - thestar.com

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

National Post Strikes Again

Another informed opinion???

An Informed Opinion

Teacher professional development has a bad reputation.

It can cause disruption for busy families trying to rearrange schedules when their children are not in school. For the media that has turned teacher bashing into a martial art, “PD days” are just an excuse for teachers to goof off.

Provincial governments, including Ontario’s, have in recent years cut back on professional development opportunities.

Still, I support Wednesday's “event” at the ACC by the Toronto District School Board to kick off the school year as a necessary condition for student success.

The challenges facing students are varied and numerous. The old school days are gone and we can’t return, nor should we. Our future citizens will have much to do that go way beyond the traditional three Rs.

Teachers need an increasing array of tools and skills to help those we entrust to their care. These include a wider range of effective teaching strategies and the development of skills to best serve as role models for caring, character, individual and social responsibility. The last two decades have made the conditions for optimal learning much clearer than when we went to school. We need to see these conditions in all our schools.

The TDSB’s Wednesday event can set the stage for obtaining these conditions in several ways. First it serves to introduce all teachers and administrators to each other in the system. There has not been a gathering for all since amalgamation to see a big picture beyond the individual classroom or even the school. Other large districts do this. Toronto should also do it every few years.

Secondly, the speakers and their messages are powerful and need to be heard by all interested in education. They should offer a clear direction toward improving student learning.

But . . .

This gathering will go nowhere without follow-up over the next few years. What kind of follow-up?

First, we need genuine professional learning communities in every school so teachers can share their collective expertise to help all the students in their building and to work with the local community. Second, this collective expertise needs to go beyond the isolated and fragmented “pockets of excellence”. It is long overdue to spread the good news about ideas in classrooms and in schools that work. Finally we need sustained and consistent quality professional development. Such professional development is characterized by legitimate choice for teachers to grow professionally rather than being talked at. Such choice can be in the form of workshops, book clubs, classroom research, and additional courses. Many teachers already do these but they are not enough.

There needs to be follow-up to help busy teachers translate the ideas from the exciting workshop to classrooms full of real kids learning real curriculum. Some time outside of class may result in more quality teaching and learning time in class. If the content in our curriculum is important we need to make it meaningful and memorable to all.

Third, let’s be careful about what success looks like when measuring the effects of professional learning. It would be a mistake to reply on test scores alone. However useful EQAO testing may be there for looking at literacy and numeracy, there are other important goals to assess. These include healthy physical and mental habits, critical thinking, artistic creativity, and responsible citizenship. These are increasingly seen as important today and in the future but are not the things demonstrated in a test.

While there are many ways to demonstrate student learning let’s focus on a few agreed-upon directions worked on over several years. End the practice of “drive by workshops” on the latest fad one year to be replaced by a newer fad the next year.

We should be rigorously evaluating our professional development programs through to their deepest levels, whether done by a school district, a single school, or a group of teachers interested in improving their teaching practice. If professional development is worth doing, it is worth doing well.

- John Myers is a Curriculum Instructor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education