Edublog Award Nominations

It is time to nominate bloggers for Edublog Awards.  You can nominate your favorite blogs before Friday, December 2.  What are you waiting for?  Here are mine:

Best class blog - Nancy VonWalde - ISP Grade 3V - An excellent start to blogging with grade 3 students.

Best ed tech / resource sharing blog - Keith Ferrel - Ed Tech Ideas - A waterfall of resources focused on elementary students and teachers.

Best teacher blog - John Crane - Second Year IB Psychology - Resources, links and info for the IB Psychology student.

Best librarian / library blog - The Daring Librarian - Fellow GCTer Gwyneth blogs about all things info lit.

Best School Administrator blog - Arnie Bieber - School21C - Conversations about the future of education.

Best free web tool - Google Apps for Education - Collaboration has never been so easy.

Lifetime achievement - Kim Cofino - I'm "always learning" from Kim, who inspires so many of us in the edtech world. 

Interacting with Experts

[caption id="attachment_300" align="alignright" width="132" caption="Stuart"][/caption]

 

Interacting with experts is not something our students get to do every day, but an especially keen, risk-taking teacher that I work with showed me that it isn't that difficult any more.  In Mrs. Caskie's IB Language and Lit class, the students have been reading Stuart, by Alexander Masters....and then asking questions of the author.

Mrs. Caskie stumbled across Masters' blog and, on a whim,  asked if it was "okay" for students to write him and ask questions.  Then she asked her students to think about what they would want to ask the author as they read the book.  This was a theme that she kept repeating until she finally said, "then let's ask him - he's got a blog."  So they did.  And Masters has been responding to the questions one by one making this learning opportunity particularly personalized.

Mrs. Caskie is excited about how this interaction with the author might serve as a springboard for some creative written or oral tasks.  Some of the student generated ideas are:

• a transcript of a "lost tape" of Stuart's


• putting Masters on trial for exploiting the homeless/disabled person with students writing the court transcript, 


• a missing chapter - perhaps of when Stuart was young and happy


• a comparison piece with Masters and Orwell meeting up and discussing identity, culture and the idea of moving.   

As with most authentic tasks, the students have been engaged and motivated.  My own learning is not something new, but a reminder of just how powerful technology is - it can connect us with professionals.  In the case of these students, technology has given them the opportunity to include a professional author in their Personal Learning Network.  We should sieze the opportunity to make this happen for more students; apparently all you have to do is ask.

If you've read Stuart, you may want to check out Masters' latest book: The Genius in My Basement

Fred Chao Visit

[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="230" caption="Johnny Hiro By Fred Chao "][/caption]

Fred Chao, professional artist and illustrator, and author of Johnny Hiro stopped by our school today to talk with students about what it takes to be an artist.  He touched on themes of perseverance, taking risks, and putting yourself out there.  He spoke about how so many diverse endeavors (writing, drawing, painting, sketching theater acting, magazine design) contribute to his comic creation ability. It was interesting to hear him mention that his education did not do enough to prepare him with the marketing and promotional skills he would need to be successful.

One of the points that I hope students take away is the importance of updating a blog as a way of keeping people in the know about what you are working on, and having an online portfolio of your work to be able to show people.

Quizlet Flashcards Now Embeddable

Quizlet, the popular online flashcard creation site, now allows you to embed your flashcards onto your blog or website. This is a really nice enhancement for an already useful technology. I've embedded a sample below, which I need to study. Perhaps by putting it on my blog I might actually find myself learning all the European capitals; one can hope.

Choose a Study ModeScatterLearnFlashcards

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