Presentation for Inservice

Today and tomorrow I will be presenting to faculty during inservice days.

For the Upper Elementary teachers I will introduce the Myths and Legends Creator, hopefully some of them would be excited about trying it.

In the afternoon I have a session for Middle School teachers about Possibilities for 21st Century Teaching and Learning. The session's goal will be to introduce the three major 21st Century frameworks. I will start with Alan November's talk on Myths and Opportunities, followed by a Prezi and the introduction of the NETS-based professional development model.
Tomorrow I will present two sessions for Upper School faculty.

Here is the Prezi for the session, it was a lot of fun to create!

Professional Development NETS based

Just finished the PD program that will be presented to faculty during inservice. I designed it using the NETS for teachers as a framework. Includes digital tools but also sessions on teaching and learning like: authentic instruction, assessments for learning, Bloom's taxonomy and digital citizenship.

Pretty ambitious? yes, doable? sure but only with full administrative support and faculty buy-in!

This is the Academic Technology website that I created.

This is the page for the Professional Development model.

Blogging: important aspects to reflect upon

Will Richardson posted a blogging scale to determine how students and teachers are using blogs (here is the original posting). Scale:

• Posting assignments. (Not blogging)
• Journaling, i.e. “This is what I did today.” (Not blogging)
• Posting links (Not blogging)
• Links with descriptive annotation, i.e. “This site is about…” (Not really blogging either, but getting close depending on the depth of the description.)
• Links with analysis that gets into the meaning of the content being linked. (A simple form of blogging.)
• Reflective, meta-cognitive writing on practice without links. (Complex writing, but simple blogging, I think. Commenting would probably fall in here somewhere.)
• Links with analysis and synthesis that articulates a deeper understanding or relationship to the content being linked and written with potential audience response in mind. (Real blogging)
• Extended analysis and synthesis over a longer period of time that builds on previous posts, links and comments. (Complex blogging)
  

Where in the scale do I place my students?
I believe that they are closer to Real Blogging as they are articulating their personal understanding on a specific topic and they are paying attention to their audience (their peers, me, outside of school viewers).

Although my original intention for the Digital Portfolio project is for students to reflect on their own learning through a series of structured assignments, I would like to shift my focus and challenge the students to write on a regular basis. I would love to see their writing continuously reflecting and extending their knowledge beyond what is covered in the classroom.

Our challenge? Move to Complex blogging!

Professional Development

Had a great exchange of e-mails about ideas for incentives for faculty professional development.
Last bit of good news, big prizes is a go!
I need to come up with a PD model a.s.a.p since I had great buy in at the FLC meeting. Was quite surprised by having it as a mandate for departmental lunches.

21st Century: jargon? buzzword?

This video makes a good case for TEACHING not just using technology tools.

Concept Maps: Bubbl.us

Really easy to create:

PuzzleMaker from Discovery Channel

KINEMATICS

CROSSWORD PUZZLE:

Across
3. how fast an object moves
6. rate of change of velocity
Down
1. location of an object
2. a quantity with direction
4. how fast and in what direction

Glogster

"Glogster is a revolutionary way of expressing your mood, feelings and ideas, and it goes miles beyond text or video! Creating a Glog lets you express all those things you haven’t been able to describe by words. It opens the door to a whole new world of communication – just choose a background, throw in some shapes and characters from our galleries, add text, your own videos or photos and perhaps a pinch of music and there it is! In just a few minutes, you can make a digital poster, a colorful medley of ideas, reflecting your own special style."

GLOGSTER website

Here is my first Glogster:

Velocity Glogster

What really matters

Pedagogy and technology go hand in hand.
A global collaborator, a global communicator. 21st century life-long learners.

Myths and Opportunities: Technology in the Classroom by Alan November from Brian Mull on Vimeo.

Using Pixton

Here is my first attempt using Pixton to create a story with comics. The possibilities for editing are virtually endless!

The website has very good tutorial videos. Just click on the Create Tab and select How to Videos from the pulldown menu.

My students had to answer the Kinematics Essential Question using Pixton.