Art Teacher Honored for Fostering Thinking and Creativity

Amy LangeAmy Lange was named the 2012-2013 Shelby County Schools High School Teacher of the Year. This Millington Central High art teacher inspires her students to be successful in art, as well as their core academic classes” (Source).

I’m enjoying working with Amy as her doctoral advisor and I’m impressed with her abilities to foster creativity. Amy is currently involved in a deep investigation of some of the work from Project Zero at Harvard University (Making Thinking Visible, Artful Thinking, Teaching for Understanding, and the Future of Learning). She and I are beginning to collaborate on the development of teaching materials, professional development workshops, and other resources centered around these ideas. Watch for more about this in the future.

For now, enjoy this video that highlights some of the outstanding work that Amy does to promote thinking, learning, and creativity.

Event Tags: #pzc2013 #hgsepzfol

Series: UM IDT Student Spotlight

Resources from Storybird Hands-On Workshop at #MSMECA13

StorybirdStorybirds are short, art-inspired stories, presentations, reports, or tutorials you and your students make to share, read, and print. Storybird is a fun, collaborative website that can be integrated in all content areas and at all grade levels. It can be an effective resource for teaching parts of a story, the writing process, promoting creativity, and more. STEM and social studies teachers can use Storybird for engaging alternatives to traditional lessons, reports and presentations. Storybird also seamlessly keeps a portfolio of each student’s work.

Participants will be guided in setting up accounts and helped as they begin using Storybird.com’s tools and services. Participants will learn how to use the teacher-specific tools.

Below are my slides from the workshop that I’ve taught a couple of times this week at the Mississippi Educational Communications Conference (MECA) in Jackson, MS. All the workshop materials and resources (including a video tutorial, additional examples, notes, etc.) are available on my wiki, Learning Telecollaboratively.

Call for Chapters: Digital Tools for Writing

Student Writing

Dr. Becky Anderson and I invite you to consider contributing your expertise by submitting a chapter in a soon-to-be-published edited book. Digital Tools for Writing Instruction in K-12 Settings: Student Perception and Experience is timely because students are currently using technology to write both in and out of the classroom. In particular, students are writing outside of the classroom in ways that are not well documented or understood. Research is needed to report what students are doing both in and out of school and the implications this has on their learning. As a result, there exists a need for an edited collection of chapters in this area to 1) keep educators abreast of how to use the growing number of technology tools, 2) address the growing emphasis on writing instruction in both K-12 settings and in teacher education programs, 3) meet national standards and current initiatives that expect teachers to integrate writing across the curriculum, and 4) inform practice for the growing number of educators involved in K-12 online teaching and learning.

Working Title

Digital Tools for Writing Instruction in K-12 Settings: Student Perception and Experience

Download Call as PDF

Publisher’s Announcement

Editors

Rebecca S. Anderson (The University of Memphis, USA)

Clif Mims (The University of Memphis, USA)

Call for Chapters

Proposal Submission Deadline: March 15, 2013

Full Chapters Due: July 20, 2013

Introduction

Currently, more emphasis is placed on writing instruction in K-12 schools than ever before. Unfortunately, however, students continue to perform poorly on national writing assessments. One possible solution to helping students become better writers is for K-12 teachers to use the growing number of digital tools to teach writing. Another possible solution is for content area teachers (i.e., math, science, social studies, and language arts) to integrate writing assignments into their curricula. Consistent with the present national STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) initiative, which also embraces writing across the curriculum, students are no longer taught how to write just by the writing teacher. Instead, teachers at all levels, and in all content areas, are expected to use writing to help students both become better writers and to learn content knowledge. Therefore, it is important that K-12 teachers learn how to use new digital tools to effectively teach writing in the content areas. In particular, it is important to learn which technologies students are using, both inside and outside the classroom, and the implications this has for teaching and learning. As a result, there exists a need for an edited collection of articles in this area.

Objectives of the Book

  1. To provide research about using digital tools to support writing instruction with K-12 students.
  2. To disseminate information about how students use digital tools to write in school settings.
  3. To disseminate information about how students use digital tools to write outside of school settings.
  4. To disseminate information about students’ perspectives on using technology to write.
  5. To discuss issues and concerns related to students using digital tools for writing.
  6. To discuss the teaching and learning implications of K-12 students using digital tools for writing.

Target Audience

The target audience of this book is educators who are, or who work with, K-12 content area teachers. Thus, the primary audience will be professionals and researchers working in the field of K-12 education and teacher education. Additional audiences are higher education and adult education professionals who can adapt the practical and effective applications for using new technologies to teach writing in their respective content areas.

Recommended topics include, but are not limited to the following:

  • Hardware (e.g., iPads, Audiobooks, Smartboards, etc.) Used to Teach Writing in K-12 Classrooms
  • Applications Used to Teach Writing in K-12 Classrooms
  • Software Applications Used to Teach Writing in K-12 Classrooms
  • Web-based/Online Tools for Use in the K-12 Writing Curriculum
  • In-School Writing Using Digital Tools
  • Students’ Out-of-School Writing Using Digital Tools
  • Action Research: K-12 Classroom Teachers Studying Students’ Digital Writing Tools
  • Training Teachers: Providing Professional Development for Digital Writing Tools
  • The Future Use of Digital Writing Tools

Submission Procedure

Researchers and practitioners are invited to submit on or before March 15, 2013, a 2-3 page chapter proposal clearly explaining the mission and concerns of his or her proposed chapter. Authors of accepted proposals will be notified by March 29, 2013, about the status of their proposals and sent chapter guidelines. Full chapters are expected to be submitted by July 30, 2013. All submitted chapters will be reviewed on a double-blind review basis. Contributors may also be requested to serve as reviewers for this project.

Publisher

This book is scheduled to be published by IGI Global (formerly Idea Group Inc.), publisher of the “Information Science Reference” (formerly Idea Group Reference), “Medical Information Science Reference,” “Business Science Reference,” and “Engineering Science Reference” imprints. For additional information regarding the publisher, please visit www.igi-global.com. This book is anticipated to be released in 2014

Important Dates

Proposal Submission Deadline March 15, 2013
Notification of Acceptance March 29, 2013
Full Chapter Submission July 30, 2013
Review Results Returned September 30, 2013
Revised Chapter Submission October 30, 2013
Final Chapter Deadline December 15, 2013

Inquiries and Submissions

Submissions can be forwarded electronically (Word document)

Rebecca S. Anderson, Ph.D.
Professor, Reading Education
The University of Memphis
406 Ball Hall
Memphis, TN 38152
USA
Website, Email, Phone: (901) 678-3977

Clif Mims, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Instructional Design and Technology
The University of Memphis
406 Ball Hall
Memphis, TN 38152
USA
Website, Email, Phone: (901) 678-5672

Digital Tools for Teachers’ Toolboxes at #iSummitConf

More than 5,000 teachers were recently informally surveyed about the Web 2.0 tools that they and their students most commonly used. This presentation will provide a hands-on introduction to these tools along with teacher-created and student-created examples. Strategies for implementation will be shared.

Below are my slides from this workshop that I’m sharing today at iSummit in Atlanta, GA. All the workshop materials and resources (including a teacher-created examples, student-created examples, tutorials, etc.) are available on my wiki, Learning Telecollaboratively. (Image Source)

Future Teachers: Your Help Is Needed — #edchat #idt6061 #idt3600

America’s future teachers are invited to participate in the “Speak Up 2012 Survey for America’s Future Teachers” to share your ideas about teaching.

Speak Up, a national online research project facilitated by Project Tomorrow®, gives individuals the opportunity to share their viewpoints about key issues in K-12 education.

Any college student, who is participating in a degree or credential program that will prepare them for a career as a K-12 teacher, is eligible to take the survey, regardless of prior student teaching experience.

Speak Up for America’s Future Teachers is facilitated through online surveys and will be aggregated at the national and institution level. All of the data is 100% confidential and no specific institutional findings will be shared with anyone outside of the participating college or university.

Participate in “Speak Up 2012 Survey for America’s Future Teachers” and share your ideas about teaching.

Thanks @InsideHigherEd for the Feature

My colleague and friend, Dr. Katrina Meyer, just brought it to my attention that Inside Higher Ed has featured one of my recent articles in its May newsletter. I’m surprised and honored. My thanks to anyone at Inside Higher Ed that might read this note.

“Inside Higher Ed is the online source for news, opinion and jobs for all of higher education…We believe that higher education [is] evolving quickly and radically, and that the time [is] right for new models of providing information and career services for professionals in academe” (Source).

Learn more at Inside Higher Ed.

 

A Message to Teachers from George Lucas

In honor of Teacher Appreciation Day filmmaker George Lucas shares his thoughts about the importance of education. In a blog post at Edutopia he shares, “There is no other job more important than education. It is the foundation of our democracy. By seizing on what’s working, and recreating those successes from one classroom to the next, we can make it better for everyone” (Source).

I encourage you to read the full post and consider George’s personal experiences in the classroom and recommendations for education as we move forward.

10 Best Uses for the Internet in Art Education

I recently discovered the following ToonDoo created by Angela Christopher and thought it was certainly worth sharing. I’m also pleased to mention that Angela is a doctoral student in our IDT program.


For Discussion

What additional uses would you suggest for those integrating the Internet with art education?