I've just been reading through my Learning & Leading with Technology magazine from ISTE. Lo and behold, staring me in the face was an excerpt about NBC's contribution to the Vancouver Olympics. Sadly for a Canadian such as myself, NBC has decided to make this fantastic educational tool "restricted to viewers within the United States." Fortunately the National Science Foundation has come through for us international educators and has the whole series available for viewing.
Here is an example of one called Slapshot Physics :
Global news has been holding a series of clips called "Beyond the Podium" that is also addressing a lot of the science behind the scenes. One example is a clip that speaks about the possibility of borrowing snow from Isreal!!!
Discovery Network's Daily Planet is also hosting a fabulous series called "Daily Planet Goes to Vancouver." If you go to this link you will have access to these clips and many others that are associated with the Olympics.
Every time I see this Olympic commercial I get goosebumps. After several viewings I started to wonder why it has such a fantastic effect on me. I decided to do some searching. Of course I tend to go youtube before I go anywhere these days. Anything you ever wanted to learn about or how to do you can find on youtube. It is REALLY effective, especially for those visual learners like myself. This commercial is called "The Best of Us - ALL TOGETHER NOW."
I noticed that the commercial is sponsered by olympics.org and found on this site, some background to the message this committee wanted to convey. The following is an excerpt from this site: "The "All Together Now" Public Service Announcement communicates the fundamental Olympic values of excellence, friendship and respect. In this spot, six larger-than-life Olympians seem to be competing against each other in what appears to be a gigantic tug-of-war. As the spot develops, it becomes clear that the athletes are not working against each other, but actually working together to unite the world in celebration of the Olympic Games. Thus, the spot conveys not only the determination and excellence of Olympic athletes, but also their unique ability to bring the world together for the Olympic Games in a massive display of optimism and inspiration."
No wonder I LOVE it!! I've already told you how much I love the Olympics. I need to let you in on a little secret now. I'm not an athlete. Those of you who know me, know that I'm the farthest thing from it. What I am is a hopeless romantic. I'm in love with the notion of bringing the whole world together in harmony. And the Olympics does just that. For a few weeks, these athletes come together from every walk of life imaginable and gather on even playing grounds to act out their passion of sport and team spirit and love of their country. How fantastic is that?
Yes I can hear you pessimists right now murmuring to yourself. I urge you to ignore the politics that try to ooze their way into these games and focus on the unparalleled energy that exists within them. It is such a rush!
As for the potential education that lies within this commercial, have your students really analyse it from both media literacy and critical thinking points of view - before you read them the excerpt from the site. Both these terms are linked to great websites that give you nice overviews of each through video clips.
Have your students deconstruct the message that was intended by this commercial. Let me know how it goes:)
Nicole Chatz, a second grade teacher, who is undertaking a graduate diploma in Learning & Teaching with Technology at Simon Fraser University, has posted in the Vancouver Observer a fantastic opportunity for students. She has created a collaborative project that will have kids from all over the world engaged in posting information to her website based on three different ideas.
By clicking on the links within the paragraph above you can find more information about her project. Registration closes January 25th.
For those of you who know me, you know that I LOVE winter Olympics. Since I can't immerse my own class in the event this time around, I'm going to try to send everything I would use in a classroom your way. Of course I'm going to try to integrate tech tools where ever possible :)
I always had students follow events from a both a Canadian website and an American website, as well as the two different broadcasting networks on television to compare viewpoints based on athletes. Official Olympic Site and their Education Programs: http://www.vancouver2010.com/ Canadian Site: http://www.cbc.ca/olympics/ American Site:
Disney's term twitterpated brings on a whole new meaning in the 21st Century:) And you, like Thumper and the gang, may say that it's not going to happen to you. But my experience says that you will become hooked whether you're ready for it or not!
In my mind, Twitter is, by far, the best way to receive timely, ongoing, at-your-fingertips professional learning, anytime and anywhere you can connect. I use Facebook to socialize, but I use Twitter only from a Global Learning perspective. In a relatively short amount of time I've attached myself to some of the most extraordinary educational leaders from all over the world. It is quite a rush to be in contact with them. I can honestly say, I've never learned so much in so little time. AND I haven't had to travel, or spend hundreds of dollars to receive such valuable professional learning. Here is a video that exemplifies my feelings:
2) Know that, in authentic global learning networks (GLN), people want to know who you are so, when setting up your profile make sure you:
use your first name and last name - no nicknames
state where you are from
if you have a blog or website you'd like to share as being part of you, post the URL
state some things about yourself in the bio section
3) Once your account is set up, you will automatically have a list of people who you "follow". Delete this bunch unless you really want to follow them. Just know, they are not necessarily educators.
4) This next step is definitely a method of viral communication. Remember this "and they told two friends...and so on" method. Within each person's home page, there will be a list of people who they follow. If this person has worked hard on creating a GLN, then they will be following some pretty great people. I like to think of myself as one who has created such a realm. Follow me:) If you go to my twitter profile, you can scroll through the list of people I follow and choose to follow them too. But don't just believe me. Look at their profiles and make sure they are who you'd like to see tweeting. I always look at their profile (making sure they have followed my rules from above), and scroll down through their tweets to see if they are saying anything that intrigues me. I'm looking for people who can educate me - I don't care if they are driving on the 401, or what they are having for supper. I want to see them posting "food for thought" about education, URLs to educational sites and blogs or pics of educational value. If I had to choose one person for you to follow it'd be Steven Anderson: he tweets the most beneficial Educational PD that I've received...hands down. His motto is "Trying to Change The World, One Tweet At A Time..." He's definitely doing that!
Give yourself permission to "lurk" for awhile, but eventually you need to join the conversation. It is a little scary at first because once you've tweeted, you can't take it back. But you soon get over that. I have two rules for tweeting: 1) Learn some tweeting etiquette through a couple of websites:
2) Give them something to look at - blogs, websites, pics.
Recently, Alec Couros, during a keynote speech in Oshawa, stated that,
"Twitter is trust among educators."
This is a fantastic analogy. Historically, we educators have spent countless hours within the four walls of our classrooms and worked our behinds off, alone. In the 21st Century we need to learn to have flat classrooms. We need to get past this state of being too nervous to share because, collectively, we are an extraordinary force. As a newly hired IT Consultant, I've seen the most amazing things happening right within my district. Educators are doing the most incredible things for their kids in their classrooms, but no one else gets to see, because those four walls keep getting in the way. If there was ever a way to start peeking out from those walls, it's by connecting to others through Twitter. Believe me, you will not regret becoming Twitterpated:)
You can easily create word clouds by copying and pasting text into the space provided. Then you can change the font, the layout, and the colours to make the cloud represent your artistic intentions. The more a word occurs in the text, the larger it will be in the word cloud. It's easy and so much fun!
When I first decided to play with Wordle, my mind automatically went to Dr Seuss. After all he has the most amazing way with words. As a matter of fact, it wouldn't surprise me if he is somehow connected to the word "wordle"...:) I easily found a reader's theatre version of one of my favourite Seuss stories, copied and pasted it into the Create window, pressed Go and voila! Can you tell which story I chose?
Obviously someone does "not-like-them" in the Seuss cloud. I think this would be a great little exercise on identifying the main idea in a piece of text, whether it be fiction or nonfiction. The larger words help the viewer quickly and easily identify the main idea.
Guess the Wordle is a great site that you can use with your students in order to guess the topic of the Wordle. Another great strategy for practicing finding the main idea.
I recently read an ISTE magazine article, where a middle school teacher, Samantha Morra, wrote about how she uses Wordle for all sorts of great things. She spoke of having her students go to the Our Documents website (obviously American) and choosing a document from the 100 Milestone Documents on the site. Her students had the most amazing conversations about the information shown in their clouds. I wondered what that might look like and decided to find a document on the Rights of the Child - copied into the Wordle window and this is what it looked like:
Ms Morra also spoke about a student putting her book report into Wordle. When it created a cloud the word "also" appeared as the largest word. The student decided that perhaps she used that word too much. Talk about a seize-the-moment teaching opportunity!
So I noticed that you can make a Wordle out of your blog feed. I decided to create one with my blog to see what it would look like:
When I was in Erie, PA earlier this summer I found out that, none other than, Extreme Makeover Home Edition had chosen a local home with which to perform their magic. I was VERY excited about this as I often spend Sunday evenings cozied up on the couch with my dog curled up in my legs (and some kleenex) to watch this heartwarming show. My hubby never concedes to watching, but I think that's because he minds the crying a little more than I:)
I did a little research and found that Ty and the crew were helping out a local "angel" named Clara Ward. She is the founder of the Youth Development Center in Erie, PA where she teaches children who have been abused and neglected. She often uses her own money to provide for the needs of these children. Clara is wheelchair bound due to a rare degenerative muscular disease and lives with her daughter.
It just so happened that my dear friends the "Hubbles" had gone to see the site a few days earlier and thought it was so neat that they kindly took me back to the site when they heard my relentless enthusiasm about it. This is what it looked like during their earlier visit:
The day they took me, the builders had completed building the house and the moving trucks were unloading furniture and medical technology. "Little Hubbet" took pics of the celebs and I was faced with the perfect opportunity to try out my new video technology called a Flip.
As you can see below, Paige is walking out from the house to meet the truck. She is just as beautiful in real life as she is on TV. I LOVE her pink construction attire!!
"Little Hubbet" caught Ty and Pauly jumping from the truck in this pic. I just happened to see Pauly downtown that evening while dancing my feet off to the M-80's (a fabulous band if you're into 80s music like me:)
The following is the movie I made with my new toy:
We were told that this episode will be second in the new season this fall. I know I'm going to be looking for it!
I tell you I LOVE MY FLIP!! It's compact, it's easy to use, you can create movies lickety split and you can pick one up for only about $145 at your local Walmart. You simply turn it on and push the red button: then you're recording. Push it again when you're done. Once you've created all your footage, you click the switch on the side and out "flips" a usb connection that, once plugged into your computer, automatically launches its own movie maker program.
First you save your raw footage into albums, second you make your movie and third you share them.
Upgrade to FlipShare and you have even more options. What a great little invention!
The day they took me, the builders had completed building the house and the moving trucks were unloading furniture and medical technology. "Little Hubbet" took pics of the celebs and I was faced with the perfect opportunity to try out my new video technology called a 
"Little Hubbet" caught Ty and Pauly jumping from the truck in this pic. I just happened to see Pauly downtown that evening while dancing my feet off to the 
