New York State Educators:
If you are teacher, librarian or school administrator at a New York public, private or independent school, WE WANT YOU! We are conducting a survey of middle school and high school students’ online research habits, and we’d love for you to participate.

The online surveys are short, painless (we don’t ask sensitive questions), easy to understand and anonymous. They should take about 10 minutes to complete.

Please note: Students will not be asked to provide their names, e-mail addresses or any other identifying information.

This chart shows declining birth rate associated with increases in personal income for the US, UK, China & India. What story can you tell about what’s happening here?

Just think how this could be used in school to bring “boring” old data to life. This service has been around for a few years, but I just learned about it thanks to Buffy Hamilton’s post:  Storytelling with Data: Statistics Tell a Story.

Gapminder includes over 200 social and economic indicators that you can use to create amazing data representations. Countries of the world are represented by bubbles on the charts. Regions of the world are shown by color and bubble size shows relative population size.

And take a look at this stellar presentation by one of the founders of Gapminder, Hans Rosling as he makes data not only compelling, but entertaining!

About 10 years ago I worked on a project called “Numbers Tell the Story” that helped libraries create compelling stories about their libraries that were supported by data. Part of the technology piece of the project was learning to use Excel & Powerpoint to transform data into visually interesting charts and images rather than boring tables of data. I’m just imagining what a Gapminder like tool could have done for that project.

Wed September 16, 2009 8pm–9pm (Eastern)
Where: Elluminate link- http://tinyurl.com/cr20live
What:  RSS widgets and Personalised Home Pages
In this third session on RSS we continue the discussion by looking at all the different ways you can use RSS widgets on websites and check out Personalised Homepages like NetVibes, PageFlakes and iGoogle for managing class information.

And make sure you check out all the other great programming, conversations and training on the Classroom 2.0 calendar – truly a terrific resource!

My first thought was that it will help me organize some of the photos I’ve added to my favorites. I ‘fave’ lots of photos and then have trouble finding them again. Galleries might help with with this. (anyone else have great ways of organizing favorited photos?)

The limit of 18 photos encourages flickr members to act as “curators” and gather the best work representing a theme. Seems like a great presentation method for a school project.

Thanks to ShellyS for adding one of my photos to her Simply Awesome gallery or I might have missed this new feature!

Get more info from flickr galleries help.

Because of their low cost and ubiquity, an increasing number of educators are considering the use of mobile devices, such as cellphones, netbooks, GPS systems, digital recorders, and MP3 players, in the classroom. When harnessed properly, supporters say, these devices can open up new educational opportunities for students. But some critics feel such devices are more of a distraction or annoyance than a learning tool. Our guests will discuss which mobile technologies are best for the classroom, when they should or should not be used, and which emerging mobile technologies will have a significant impact on K-12 education.

(via: Mobile Libraries)

(image courtesy limowreck666)

• Aug 19 Mobile Devices within Instruction    
• Sep 16 Digital Content    
• Oct 14 Web 2.0 and Education    
• Oct 28 21st Century Skills    
• Nov 11 Top 10 Trends in Student Learning with Technology    
• Dec 2 Internet Safety

I have lots of school library media specialists in the technology classes I teach. They are often the ones in the forefront of using technology in their school districts and come up with great ideas for how technology can support student learning and help teachers do their jobs better.  At the same time, they often tell me that many of the tools we explore are blocked or that students can’t have email, so therefore can’t even get accounts with so many of the tools.

When I was a gov docs librarian, our tagline was “documents to the people”. Well I think my new clarion call will be “technology to the students”!

In that vein, take a look at this great blog post Google Apps for Education overview by Kathy Schrock. She details how they arranged for school email accounts for all their students and teachers. How they use Google services to share documents, calendars and more. And she includes an excellent model for an email permission slip, explaining why students need email and acceptable use guidelines.

If you’re having challenges in your school district, maybe this model can help. Just keep at it! Demonstrating the value and need for access to technology. You’ll get their eventually.

Had successes in your district? Please share!!!!

Tools covered include: delicious, Bubblr, YouTube, RSS, SecondLife, iTunes, Twitter, BlackBoard, Photoshop, PowerPoint and many many more. And there’s a special section of screencast for ELT/ESL. I could spend all day watching these and learning about new tools and new tips for ones I’m already familiar with.

Tuesday – Track S201 -Open Educational Resources: Join the Global Education Community

Curriki – Free, collaborative, open content, creative commons licensed curriculum sharing  wiki http://www.curriki.org/

Why? Traditional textbooks are hard to update, out of date,  hard to distribute and just

plain expensive.

Advantages of collaborative curricula:

• potential for interactivity
• uses can now create and improve, not jsut consume content
• Content can be developed colalboratively by the community, botgh local and global
• Teachers are more engaged in the process

Who is Curriki?

• First internet destination for Open Source Curricula (OSC)
• Founded by Sun Microsystemss in 2004
• spun off as a fully independent non profit in 2006

What is Curriki

• Repository for curricula validated by experts
• free online curricula created by community
• material has defined learning objectives
• lesson  plans
• textbooks & other instructional materials
• can host many file formats including video
• includes good tools for content creation.
• members can create groups within curriki to work together.

• Takes advantage of a Web 2.0 content development cycle eg: create –> publish –> edit, comment, revise –> publish revised content (rinse and repeat)
• users no longer need to buy a single expensive textbook or workbook or instructional activites from publisher
• Can create customized book or learning resources  
• Teachers are empowered to be content creators
• 63,000 members
• 25,000 assets
• statewide spanish curriculum from Wyoming
• extensive content from several NY BOCES 

Contents shared by

• for profit publishers
• non-profitpublishers/organizations
• school districts/regional organizations
• ministries of education
• schools of education
• Global community of educators
• Content from Nortel – technology education for educators
• Organizations can customize the platform to share with their communities
• Some countries are moving towards putting all their education materials on curriki  (Indonesia?)

What about Quality control?

• quick check by a real person to see if the content is really educational material
• review by subject matter expersts – about 20% of the repostory has been reviewed. Users can nominate material to be reviewed –
• reviewers are on staff – master teachers – with at least 20 years experience,
• member comments –
• 2009 – adding a system for star ratings by members

Curriki’s Strategy going forward

• Build two sides of repository 1: core material that has been created by professional publishers and 2: the open side created by contributors – make it easier for school
• districts to find published and to feel more comfortable with this whole idea which is
• really the reverse of the publishing process that most districts are familiar with
• Build a suite of easy to collaboration tools and publishing templates
• establish community of educators
• engage partners to participate in local global projects
• will have curriki platforms for different communities/regions – eg: Curriki UK  – site controlled by UK team. UK content has greater visibility

What educators can do now

• Share existing content
• build and share curriculum
• create groups to collaborate

Summer of content

• teachers paid to create curriculum over the summer –
• do you have something you’ve created that you’d like to share?
• deadline coming up soon
• go to web site for info

Follow them on Twitter http://twitter.com/Curriki

Questions from audience – How can it really be free?  Really, really non profit. Lots of grants and other big donors and supporters.

photo by inju

If you’re a teacher/librarian, do you friend your students on Facebook? MySpace? twitter? flickr? Do you communicate via email? IM? Texting? Is Facebook different than other tools for some reason?  As educators do we have the responsibility for teaching smart/safe online behavior in ALL possible contexts? Does setting up a separate account for your teacher persona solve the problems? Does your school district have a policy? Should they? Or are we trying to control what can’t be controlled?  Will all this worry and fretting seem quaint in 5 years? (1?) Have you avoided the issue by not using Facebook and other ’social’ tools?

There are some great discussions going on around these issues on Doug Johnson’s and Dean Shareski’s blogs.

• Don’t confuse social networking with educational networking
• More on “friending” students
• Control is a Worthless Pursuit

Whether you have a strong opinion on the issues or not, take a few minutes to read the various points of view expressed in these posts and comments. And add your voice to the discussions!