Category: Middle School

U.S. Presidential Elections

Some explanations of the American electoral college are clear as mud. CommonCraft comes to the rescue with an explanation in plain English. Depending on the breadth of the topic within your curriculum you might also consider using one or more of the Schoolhouse Rock videos about American history and government.

“It all starts with your vote. Make it count.” (Source: CommonCraft)

Collaborating with Online Word Processing

We’re in the second and final day teaching our professional development workshops with the Power Center Academy. This is a new charter school that will open its doors to students for the very first time next week. Take a look at PCA’s mission and consider ways that you can contribute to their worthy efforts.

We’re going to be looking at collaborating with online productivity tools this afternoon. I’m briefly going to highlight a few strategies and examples for using Google Docs and leading a quick collaborative activity. I went ahead and put together a self-guided module to which the teachers can refer for additional resources, video examples, and a more in depth look at integrating online word processing with teaching and learning. I invite you to share your related ideas and resources at the bottom of the wiki page.

It’s Good to Be Back

Kannapolis City SchoolsI’m excited to be working with Kannapolis City Schools again (Previous Posts: 1, 2). I’m helping provide professional development for part of their grant funded technology integration initiative called IMPACT. I’ve been asked to facilitate the following workshops:

Please share any resources, information, cases, scenarios, etc. that you think will help teachers learn more about these topics by clicking on the session titles above and adding your contribution to the Notes and Resources from My PLN section at the bottom of each wiki. Rest assured that I welcome your input in this endeavor!

Greetings from Selmer, TN

I’m spending today and tomorrow with teachers in McNairy County Schools. I’m looking forward to them discovering Andrew Churches’ revised Bloom’s Taxonomy and related resources. We’ll also explore ways to effectively integrate a wide variety of digital technologies and Web 2.0 tools with teaching and learning. Watch for us as we venture out into the network. We’ll be using the following tag for everything related to this professional development workshop: mcnairypd (and #mcnairypd on Twitter).

NECC This Afternoon

Here are the presentations/discussions that I attended/ participated in during the first half of this afternoon.

A Plan for Wiki Adoption by Ken Pruitt
Ken’s presentation was an adaptation of Stewart Mader’s Wikipatterns. Ken shared suggested strategies for implementing the use of wikis at all levels.

Educational Technology and the Law facilitated by Jon Becker and Scott McLeod
While preparing for the Teaching and Learning with Web 2.0 seminar I’ve realized how important it is that I become more knowledgeable about copyright, intellectual property, plagiarism, and related topics. I especially liked how they were able to pose existing IRL analogies for the virtual situations under discussion.

I’m off to the the much anticipated (at least by me) poster presentation of the ISTE Classroom Observation Tool. I plan to share what I learn soon.

NECC This Morning

I’ve spent most of today participating in the following sessions and meeting online friends in the Bloggers’ Cafe. I’m looking forward to the presentation of the ISTE Classroom Observation Instrument (ICOT) later today. I’m curious to see how it stacks up against similar instruments like LoTi. Perhaps I’ll get a chance to post my thoughts about it. For now, here’s what I’ve attended to day.

Diigo: A Swiss Army Knife for Your Browser by Maggie Tsai, Diigo Co-Founder
Maggie gave a crash course in the basic features and use of Diigo. After her presentation she asked to interview me on camera and I reluctantly agreed. I shared some of the most common ways that Diigo is being used by my students, teachers with whom I mentor in professional development, and by me. She also asked me to share ways that I thought their technology could be improved and I reiterated ideas that I’d previously shared on Miguel’s discussions (here and here) related to this topic. I was pleased with her responses to my technical and design suggestions (She even contacted the engineers about one of the issues while we were talking.) and she provided Diigo’s rationale for why the ads, for now, will continue to exist throughout the tool. She assured me that they are indeed considering

Creating a Ning Network from Scratch by Steve Hargadon
If you want to learn about setting up your own Ning you might as well learn from the master. I’m comfortable using this “tool” but Steve provided useful insight regarding design and implementation which I found valuable.

Using Understanding by Design (UbD) to Create Technology Rich, Deep Learning Unit Plans by Chris Lehmann and Marcie Hull
There are oodles of similar models out there but I found this one to be practical but thorough. I’m going to take another look at Understanding by Design when I return home.

This Afternoon at EBC

Diving Deep into Google Earth and Google Maps

Web 2.0 in Teacher Education (Program Info)

  1. My presenter notes
  2. Alternative to the term Web 2.0 is the Read, Write Web
  3. Teacher education and professional development that effectively helps teachers better integrate technology with teaching and learning
    • Allow the teachers to select their own goals and help them reach them
    • Online social networks can more easily provide the in-time assistance, coaching, mentoring, etc. that individuals during development/learning, but teachers often don’t think about using the networks
  4. How do we prepare teachers to teach in the 1-to-1 environment?
    • The emphasis should change from "teaching" to designing learning that engages the students.
  5. Resources for future teachers

Designing the 21st Century Global Learning Environments (Program Info)

  1. Building on some online discussion that has been ocurring for the past year here and here.
  2. If there were no barriers what would education look like? Brainstorming notes