NASA astronaut Mark Polansky, who will be commanding the next mission to the International Space Station, has just posted a video to NASA’s official YouTube channel inviting YouTubers and Twitter fans to take part in his next mission, submitting video questions via YouTube and following mission updates over Twitter.
To ask a question, Polansky says to create a video of around thirty seconds and post it to YouTube, then send it to his Twitter account using an @reply. He’ll respond to the questions on NASA TV, which is broadcast nation-wide. (Source)
I encourage you and your students to participate in this activity. It’s a rare opportunity. Who knows? You may have a future NASA astronaut, controller or engineer sitting in your class!
I’m a big, big fan of Diigo. I appreciate that I can save and share bookmarks, highlight and leave comments on webpages, annotate resources, host and participate in groups and forums on particular topics, message and interact with friends and colleagues, and much more. It’s a very big component of my personal learning network (PLN). I’m also impressed and pleased that the Diigo founders and employees listened to its community of teacher-users and developed Diigo for Educators (More fondly referred to as EduDiigo). Here are some thoughts about about why teachers and learners might use Diigo.
I started a new group dedicated to the topic of design and development. I invite everyone with an interest/expertise in the topic to become an active member.
FYI, consider joining these other groups that started, too.
I encourage everyone to take a look at Diigo’s services and consider taking advantage of it. Please feel free to friend me because, as I frequently say, “Together we learn more.”
The Tennessee Department of Education is proud to announce the launch of its electronic learning center to give students, parents and educators access to learning and professional development resources anytime, anywhere. Through a collaboration with Apple, Inc. and the Tennessee Board of Regents, the ELC has a dedicated site on iTunes U, an area of the iTunes Store that provides free education content. The ELC is designed to enhance achievement by providing access to more than 280 curriculum-based audio and video tracks developed by the Tennessee Department of Education. (Source)
(Hat tip to Linda for bringing this to my attention.)
(NOTE: I received this announcement via email from Inspiration.)
Webcast: Using Visual Learning Techniques to Improve Academic Performance with Inspiration® Date: Thursday, January 29th, 2009 Time: 12:00-12:45 p.m. Pacific Time, 3:00-3:45 p.m. Eastern Time Register for this event today!
Inspiration® helps students develop ideas, analyze concepts and improve organizational skills. Join us on January 29th to explore templates and examples that will help your students improve academic performance in Science, Language Arts and Social Studies. Cathy Cuff, our Education Development Manager for Science, will host a complimentary 45-minute webcast demonstrating how you can use Inspiration 8 to:
Expand on ideas to create well-supported thinking and conclusions
Build knowledge by increasing comprehension of new concepts
Increase organizational skills by connecting ideas into a logical hierarchy
Join us for this professional development webcast!
If you are unable to join us, don’t worry – the webcast will be archived and available to you shortly after the event concludes.
“A recent Google update to their online Calendar application provides host of cool functions but many of you might have missed a cool tool that lets you insert relevant weather information into your calendar automatically making super useful if you want to plan events with the weather in mind.” (Source)
Educational Uses
What are some of the ways that this could be useful in the classroom?
I was a big fan of the The Electric Company as a kid. It was full of cool music (Such as Silent E), skits (Remember Easy Rider?), cartoons (like Letter Man narrated by Joan Rivers) and Spider-Man. The Electric Company is the reason I became such a big fan of Spider-Man. He was so cool.
Take a look.
And who could forget these fun segments…
Yes, that is Morgan Freeman’s silhouette on the left in the above video.
I was excited to learn that The Electric Company is returning to PBS. We’ll no longer have to mine through YouTube to find the videos to help teach our children how to read (Our kids really enjoy watching the “old show that [I] watched when [I] was a kid.”). The new version debuts today on PBS. Check your local listings for times.
The revamped Electric Company…bears little resemblance to the old show. The new program aspires to be as culturally clued-in as its predecessor was. It’s imbued with a hip-hop sensibility, deploys cutting edge graphics and drops allusions to touchstones like 24 and Indiana Jones. But instead of a series of sketches that have little to do with one another, each new episode has a cohesive narrative built around the antics of the Electric Company, a team of four singing and rapping wordsmiths who use the power of reading to defeat the nefarious Prankster gang…There is also a new stable of celebrity guests: in the debut episode, Sean Kingston contributed a song about the two different sounds the letter C makes. Pete Wentz, Jimmy Fallon, Wyclef Jean, Ne-Yo and Common all pop up in the first season. (Source)
Discussion
What was your favorite part of the 1970s version of The Electric Company?
I was a big fan of the 