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Ft Plain Central Schools Tech Camp

Dec 6th, 2008
by pollyalida.
15 comments

Ft Plain Jr Sr High Web 2.0 Workshop I’m looking forward to meeting with 20 teachers at the Ft. Plain (NY) Central School on Saturday Dec 6. At 8 am! On a Saturday! Wow, you guys are dedicated souls.

This is going to be a 2.0 “tech camp” training day. We’ll be covering social bookmarking with delicious.com. We’ll use iGoogle to create a personal web portal and as a place to pull together RSS feeds from blogs, news sources, databases, delicious and more. iGoogle is a fun and useful tool that students can use to gather research material. (more…)

Glogster: taking posters to a whole new level

Oct 24th, 2008
by pollyalida.
1 comment

Glogster for Education lets you create online posters with graphics, photos, text, video and audio. Wow, what a great tool for student projects. I can see lots of other fun uses for this in public libraries too.

Though Glogster has been around for a while, I just heard about it today in a twitter post from Buffy Hamilton. Seems the Glogster for Education service has just recently launched.

For a great example of a class project using Glogster, check out Buffy’s 11th grade lit project on Thoreau and Emerson.

Growing Into Inquiry workshops for School Library Media Specialists

Sep 25th, 2008
by pollyalida.
No comments yet

I sent out a plea for help today to my school library buddies, asking for some curriculum links for an upcoming workshop. Mary Ratzer, a former School Library Media Specialist, now a consultant (Learning Curve Associates) sent me a wonderful list of Inquiry Lesson Plan Sites that she uses in her workshops.

“We use these sites in a workshop called Growing Into Inquiry where we transform flat, task oriented, fact detecting research tasks into inquiry process gold. It is our strategy to thereby implement the Information Inquiry Curriculum that 50 SLMS wrote with Linda Fox and me in 2006.”

I’ve had the pleasure of attending presentations given by Mary and am in awe of her knowledge, enthusiasm and ability to engage an audience. I’ve also co-presented some workshops with her and learned so many new things in the process.

Don’t pass up a chance to attend a presentation or workshop by her! 

2.0 in the Classroom & PBS Election Curriculum

Sep 10th, 2008
by pollyalida.
No comments yet

Earlier tonight I received a note about a live webcast discussing the PBS multimedia Election 2008 curriculum and the Web 2.0 tools and resources that are part of the curriculum. Wow, I’m so glad I clicked through to it, even though I got there a bit late.

The material they’ve created is just terrific!  Access, Analyze, Act: A Blueprint for 21st Century Engagement will help you “discover the power of social media while promoting your students’ civic engagement.” This is a treasure trove of ideas, resources, interactive tools, lesson plans and more – all showing the enormous power and value of 2.0 tools. And what better context than this presidential election.

Use these resources to show the value of these tools and why we need to open our classrooms to them.

In addition to this terrific content, it was really interesting to see Elluminate in action.  (more…)

Wikispaces: 100,000 Free K-12 Wikis – and 250,000 More!

Sep 9th, 2008
by pollyalida.
No comments yet

2 1/2 years ago, Wikispaces committed to giving away 100,000 ad-free, private, unlimited use wikis to K-12 educators. They reached that number this weekend. And are ready to start on the next 250,000! Wow.

250,000 More K-12 Wikis Like the first 100,000, all of our K-12 wikis feature all the benefits of our Plus service:

  • full privacy, only the people you allow in can see your wiki
  • no advertising, your online classroom will remain ad-free
  • unlimited use, as many users, pages, edits, and files, as you like, no limits
  • a customizable look and feel, so you can make it feel like home

Share Your Wikispaces in Education Story: Have a great story about how you’ve used Wikispaces? Share it!

Games in Education Symposium – Aug 19-20

Aug 17th, 2008
by pollyalida.
1 comment

This looks really interesting. Wish I could attend.

The second annual Games in Education Symposium, free to middle and high school teachers, is scheduled for Tuesday & Wednesday, August 19-20th and will take place at the Schenectady Museum & Suits-Bueche Planetarium.

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