This Suggested Surfing is a follow-up to my recent post, Tough Times Call for Frugal Choices and Assistance for Classrooms in Need.
I Love Schools.com – A Helping Hand for Teachers.
Elmer’s Glue Crew – Partnering for a Better Tommorow.
Feedback
Please share additional charitable organizations and resources for helping classrooms in the comments.
Here are some additional resources aimed at helping teachers, schools and students receive beneficial resources and financial assistance. This Suggested Surfing is a follow-up to my recent post, Tough Times Call for Frugal Choices.
Kids in Need– Ensuring that every child is prepared to learn and succeed by providing free school supplies nationally to students most in need.
A Gift for Teaching – Improving public education by transferring our community’s surplus materials and resources free to teachers for their students in need.
Art Skills – Poster making supplies with a program for teachers to earn free classroom supplies.
Feedback
Please share additional charitable organizations and resources for helping classrooms in the comments.
Glenda Watson Hyatt shares her experiences living with cerebral palsy to motivate and inspire others to think about how they perceive their own situation and their own world around them. She does all this by typing with only her left thumb! (Source)
Here’s some Suggested Reading to help those facing tight budgets.
Online Charities for Classrooms in Need
There are many online websites aimed at helping teachers, schools and students receive beneficial resources and financial assistance. Here are a couple with which I’m familiar.
Feedback
Please share additional charitable organizations and resources for helping classrooms in the comments.
Miguel Guhlin has once again pushed my thinking. This time its about the issue of personal content that K-12 teachers post online. I’ve spent a lot of time researching, thinking about and discussing this topic, but it struck me that this issue is actually a lot hairier than I’ve previously realized. There are a lot of different aspects that need to be considered.
Here are a few points from Miguel’s post. I encourage you to consider each question twice asking yourself Do.. the first time and Should… the second time.
Rather than commenting on the discussion at this point, I hope to further it by asking a few more questions.
Educators, what are some strategies for connecting the classroom with the outside world?
NOTE: I’d like to share responses in my keynote at the iConnect iLearn Conference and on my blog and wiki. You can submit your ideas using the form below, share your text/audio/video reply in the Comments section of this post or respond to the corresponding Twitter and Plurk discussions. You can also view the compiled database of suggested strategies on my wiki, Learning Telecollaboratively.
As I mentioned in a recent blog post I’m teaching a seminar this summer focusing on Teaching and Learning with Web 2.0 Technologies. I concluded the earlier post by sharing the following:
In keeping with the principles of Web 2.0 I encourage the participation of everyone with an interest or expertise in this topic. You may contribute to the discussion and fun by using the following tag/keyword: idt7078. Be on the lookout for ways (Ustream, Skype, Twitter, Plurk, etc.) to informally participate with us. I would certainly consider making it possible for those wishing to enroll in the course and participate from a distance, too.
Greg R. Fishbone replied to my earlier post and asked the following question regarding my concluding statements.
I’d love to participate informally, but how does one follow a keyword?
I think this is a GREAT a question and I suspect Greg is not the only one wondering about this. I’m sharing this information here in hopes of helping Greg and anyone else that may be interested in being part of our learning community this summer.
Google Keyword Search
You can add the following RSS feed to your aggregator (such as Google Reader or Bloglines). New blog posts, wiki entries, bookmarks, videos, podcasts, etc. tagged with idt7078 will then be “delivered” to you as they show up in Google.
http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch_feeds?hl=en&q=idt7078&ie=utf-8&num=10&output=rss
An alternative to this strategy would be to setup a Google Alert for idt7078.
Twitter Search
You can also add a keyword search for idt7078 to TweetDeck or similar Twitter platform if you are using one. If not, then you can add the following RSS feed for the Twitter Search of the course tag to your aggregator.
http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=idt7078
Plurk Search
Add idt7078 to your list of Saved Searches in your profile’s dashboard.
You can earn a certificate in educational technology with our 4 online courses. Visit http://idt.memphis.edu/certificate for full details and assistance.
I’m a big fan of goal setting. It can provide a road map for the short or long-term and can be an effective motivational strategy. I have set a few professional development goals for this summer and have challenged a few of my friends/colleagues to do the same thing. In 2008 I realized that I could set this up as a blog meme and hopefully encourage some of my online friends to achieve a few items from their To Do Lists. There are a myriad of ways to approach this, but I’ve opted to take the short-term, easy-to-assess approach, but I’ll leave some wiggle room for you to customize it to meet your needs. The official information is below.
Directions
Summer can be a great time for professional development. It is an opportunity to learn more about a topic, read a particular work or the works of a particular author, beef up an existing unit of instruction, advance one’s technical skills, work on that advanced degree or certification, pick up a new hobby, and finish many of the other items on our ever-growing To Do Lists. Let’s make Summer 2009 a time when we actually get to accomplish a few of those things and enjoy the thrill of marking them off our lists.
The Rules
NOTE: You do NOT have to wait to be tagged to participate in this meme.
My Goals
I Tag…
I’m teaching a special topics seminar this summer for graduate students (3 hours graduate credit). The topic will be Teaching and Learning with Web 2.0 Technologies. While we’ll consider common trends and issues and survey many of the popular tools and services related to Web 2.0, the heart of the course will be learning to effectively integrate Web 2.0 technologies and principles with teaching and learning. The focus will be on K-12 education but accommodations can be made for individuals from other fields (health, corporate, military, higher education, etc.).
I’m very excited about this class. I taught the course in Summer 2008 and we learned a lot and had a blast! You can view the ebook (authored by the graduate students) and other course materials that emerged from the 2008 Teaching and Learning with Web 2.0 class to get an idea of what this class will be like.
In keeping with the principles of Web 2.0 I encourage the participation of everyone with an interest or expertise in this topic. You may contribute to the discussion and fun by using the following tag/keyword: idt7078. Be on the lookout for ways (Ustream, Skype, Twitter, Plurk, etc.) to informally participate with us. I would certainly consider making it possible for those wishing to enroll in the course and participate from a distance, too.
