Cool Cat Teacher Blog is at coolcatteacher.com

Webheads in Action is planning an online convergence on May 18-20, 2007. To sign up, go over there and click on the left side of the page to create a log in username. It will be a lot of fun, but look at the amazing speakers! Stephen Downes George Siemens Etienne Wenger Robin Good Barbara Ganley Teemu Leinonen Leigh Blackall Honestly, I could never get enough conferences! They inspire me and more importantly, they connect me. I have so much to learn! Will you be there?

The WOW2 show that I co-host with Jennifer Wagner, Cheryl Oakes, and Sharon Peters has moved to a new feed location at http://feeds.feedburner.com/WomenofWeb2?q=womenofweb2.xml . If you're subscribing over itunes or any type of reader, you'll want to delete the old podomatic feed and switch to this one. Some cool recent shows: Steve Dembo, April 24 (I met him in Chicago, he is amazing! More on that later!) Dr. Cheri Toledo April 17 and her amazing class of PhD students including Larry the amazing superintendant (every super should listen to this super-super!) Part 1 Part 2 Web 3D supershow George Siemens - April 4 Part 1 Part 2 We really have a great time over there and are so grateful for the amazing folks at edtechtalk who make it all happen behind the scenes. I always make it a point to catch at least one of the other shows over there each week. They work very hard to bring the best in educational programming for teachers.

OK, I know that some of you may be just sick of hearing about horizon. It is a great project and it is my life right now! (Along with efolios, senior movies, and 5th grade bloggers). Thank you Karl Fisch! Karl Fisch so kindly delivered the keynote address to our horizon project over the weekend and it is embedded in the wiki . Really, it is a keynote to all students, because what he says is applicable to you in your classroom as well: With the Horizon Project, you now have the chance to improve on my vision. In some ways, your task is easier than mine was, because you have the Horizon Report to use as your basis. But in other ways, your task is much harder. While I could make up the future, your vision has to be much more grounded in current reality. And your vision has much more potential to impact people around the world, because what you guys create will be seen by students, teachers and schools around the world. They really want to know what you think the future of education lo...

Simulpost with TechLearning So many educators, like myself, attend online conferences and webcasts and use our RSS feeds as our primary sources of education. These tools have revolutionized my life and my classroom! I am a better person, mother, teacher, and person because of them. So, with the proliferation of peer to peer (P2P) types of communications why do we still need face to face (F2F)? I am thinking of this because tonight I am nestled in a hotel room in a rainy night in Chicago getting ready for the TechForum conference tomorrow. (Sponsored by Technology & Learning magazine.) I can give you a couple of reasons I still make the effort to have F2F with those who are the best. 1 – Surround yourself with the best – become like the best. We carefully watch the friends of our children because we know that our children will become like them. Likewise, I have always taken the philosophy...

Beth Kanter has given a great overview of Horizon (including a funny look into some of my twittering lately!) I appreciate her and the other volunteer's willingness to jump in and bring attention to and get feedback on this project. It is very exciting! I'm packing to head to Chicago tomorrow for the TechForum with Technology and Learning ! So many amazing people to meet there. I'll be sharing with you. Gotta fly!

One step closer to the mobile office in your hand. RIM (the maker of Blackberry software) announces that software will be available this year to install on cell phones with Microsoft Windows Mobile Software. It will give your cell phone blackberry type services like checking e-mail. Meanwhile, it seems that political candidates may be more accessible to the masses during the next Presidential Election. Online debates and methods of posting questions for candidates are being planned! The world is changing and meanwhile, every spare moment of mine is being spent on the horizon project (10th grade), efolios (9th grade), the senior movie production (12th), and the graduation movie (11th). Fifth graders are blogging but have been turned back over to their teacher! They now pretty much blog during their classtime! Life is nutty and I've also been putting the finishing touches on my work for the TechForum on Friday! Some really amazing people have e-mailed me to let me know they...

Public School Violence and Rumors of Violence in South Georgia A parent just called asking us to watch for strange people. (He says that there was a drive by shooting this morning at Colquitt County elementary school in Moultrie Georgia and that several bomb threats have been called in and all students have been sent home. I cannot confirm this online. ) However, the message from the superintendent from yesterday says the following: On Thursday, April 19, 2007, a message threatening violence was reported to have been sent from the home computer of a freshman student at Colquitt County High School. It was investigated and the student was removed from school. The police were notified. During the evening hours rumors began spreading of acts of violence to occur at Colquitt County High School today to commemorate the anniversary of Columbine. The rumors continue to be investigated, but at this point there has been no indication that there is a basis. The Moultrie City Po...

Interestingly, in Horizon we have one thing that tends to be a "time waster." I was chatting with Terry Freedman about this last night. English! Little things kind of like the "You say potato I say potat-oh" song. Julie says analyse.... I say analyze. Julie says artefact...I say artifact. But none of us say "Let's call the whole thing off." It is frustrating because Firefox 2 is definitely set for American English. However, I'm to the point that if it is a correct English derivative that I will leave it on there. Is that a problem? I don't think so. It is a matter of respect and understanding that there are different derivatives of English in the world. Julie says it much more eloquently than I, however, this is an issue that we have to discuss for global collaboration on all scales...and it wasn't evident until we started cooperate. There is a great conversation evolving over at Julie's blog, including a wikipedia entry on diffe...

Some of the highlights from the discussion areas of the horizon wiki. These students take initiative, listen to this from Cannelle in Bangladesh : hay, we did not have a class today and this is the first day of the weekend, with saisa starting, so i havent been able to come onto the wiki properly and as much as i can. but tomorrow i'll finish it all of. You were put in groups alreayd from the beginning. but since i see that Trey, Omar and knesia want to do education i decided to change the groups so that everyone is happy to work on their topic. because i belive that its important to be motivated by something you like to do. so there's the final list. ;-) and That's true. I think we've got the hardest topic to work on. So the resources can be found from the introduction page. i think this is something we're going to have to write predictions for. or from Casey to her group analzying social networking and its impact on education make sure you incorporate what paren...

Fascinating observation from Ewan McIntosh about a school that is being called a pioneer. He says: Games Digest and the BBC reporting on a Birmingham school which is doing "pioneering work" in the use of Sony's PSP gaming console in the classroom - but forbidding kids to play any games on them. What? Talk about missed opportunities: To me, it is a little like telling the office that you're going to have a day out of the office at the beach to plan but making them show up in suits... what is the point? It is going to be expensive to get true high quality educational gaming. It is also going to take something else...cooperation and collaboration. To get the scale needed to be profitable, I think it is going to be have to be multi-country . (I've read costs to develop a console game running between $7 Million and I heard on a recent podcast (sorry I can't find it -- I was at the beach) $25 million.) But, the fact is that true gaming can offer powerful rew...

What are the best blogs? The bloggers choice award is ready for your nomination. Nominations for best blog in education and many others. Will be fascinating to see which awards finally emerge as being the most meaningful.

Julie Lindsay has had a lot of help looking at the Horizon Rubric from Paul Fairbrother who is the online learning coordinator from the IBO (international baccalaureate organization). This after the advisors, teachers, and many others who are participating in the project have also given feedback. (Including Terry Freedman and our other flat classroom judge s who spent an incredible amount of time.) Probably 80 hours has been spent on this rubric with the goal being to get one rubric for all five classes. We are... close. ( Lee Baber and her NETS certified associates are also taking a look at it as well.) Stop by and comment on the discussion tab of the rubric or leave a comment here as we make the final edits today. http://horizonproject.wikispaces.com/HP+Rubrics http://horizonproject.wikispaces.com/Rubric+Overview Something very incredible is beginning to happen in the edublogosphere... it is growing to include educators who don't blog. It is growing to include the offline...

The new news site... Wikipedia. Fascinating blog post from Megan Golding , Wikipedia gets the news right ... "Not until I clicked on the Wikipedia article’s citations did I wind up at a major news outlet. I think Wikipedia-as-news-source is an important trend (and was the shining star in citizen journalism , according to one blog) ...I gave my students an opportunity today to see and comment on the Wikipedia-as-news-provider trend. After reviewing the article, the students talked about being impressed by the details. We also discussed the idea of smart mobs , which was new to most of them." Last time I checked the Wikipedia article , it had 138 sources . Although the talk page bounces around like a ping pong ball, actually many of the items "broke" there. This page has been edited over 500 times . On another note for bloggers, many in the blogosphere are calling for one day of blog silence on April 30th. I plan to honor it, however, I find it a disturbing trend...

Join us as we break ground with an online conversation with teachers in the field and teachers in a doctoral program with Dr. Cheri Toledo, from Illinois State University.This is how experienced teachers are embracing the new technologies. http://coe.ilstu.edu/etip/ Outline for Tuesday evening. Sound checks between 8:30 and 8:45 EST pm Tues.Then at 8:50, I will start streaming, where you can listen at www.edtechtalk.com Channel A, and join the chat as well. You only need to put your name NO password to join t he chat. Since you are part of the show you may want to put your name Julie wow guest, so people will know you are part of the show! Responsibilities: Cheryl - podmaster; Jen - Wiki links; Sharon - Chat; Vicki - Chat I. Introduction of Guests Karen - wikis Julie - blogging Larry - Superintendent-ideas for implementation Kathy - podcasting in secondary English literture Colleen - 3rd grade blogging II.Since many of our listeners are considered "first wave" adopters of ne...

To follow the terrible shootings at Virginia Tech today, keep an eye on Wikipedia . For current events, it is just more accurate. This is heartbreaking. tag: Wikipedia , Virginia Tech

Kudos to this video by Darren Draper. Kudos because this is the way that staff developers should be developing staff. I daresay this one video over e-mail will do more to motivate staff and get them talking than an hour of being "preached to" about Web 2! Using Web 2 to teach Web 2 - what a novel idea!? It is powerful and amazing. (Thanks to Julie Lindsay for pointing it out over at Twitter.) Staff developers -- are you encouraging your staff to make videos such as this? Is staff development stuck in Web 1 or is it modeling Web 2 as it teaches Web 2. Darren, you have made me think! Wow! Do you blog?

I know we're all busy, but innovation is happening. Interestingly if you peruse the About Us for Horizon page, you'll see that many of the busiest people are each taking an hour or two for this project. This is about this project but it is also about having the conversations and research to improve education at a very real, practical level. Beth Ritter-Guth, an advisor to the virtual worlds team and Second Life Expert is organizing a conference and any of you who would like to present or discuss your viewpoints of this project need to get in touch with Beth immediately. Following is a transcript of our discussion today that I have used with her permission. Transcript from Google Talk on 4/14/07 ; sorry for the typos! Beth: hey Vicki Beth Ritter-Guth: 2007 SL BP Conference...HERE WE COME! Victoria: Hey, girl. Beth: I am planning a conference in SL for the end of May, and was wondering if your students would like to put together a poster session on ...

From the Horizon Project Ning (our behind the scenes place to share) I am sharing SOME of my posts here as well. OK, call me a geek. "OK, I"m a geek." As a part programmer/entreprenuer from the 90's and a graduate of Georgia Tech, programming is something I do. Ran up against this really cool tool called Grazr that lets you do cool things with your feeds like I did on the Horizon news page. OK, so how did I do it? 1) I pulled all of the feeds I wanted into my bloglines account and put it in the first folder called "horizon." 2) Then, I exported the subscriptions to an OPML feed and saved it onto my hard drive. 3) Then, I opened it in Notepad and deleted out all of the feeds I didn't want (careful to preserve the two ending tags there) and changed the title to Horizon project Feeds... (the thing you see in the title.) and resaved it. 4) I opened an account at grazr, uploaded the file and put in the information. I also created a "widget" whic...

This quote caught my eye from Scott Floyd over at the Texas Bluebonnet Writing Project : Sure, with how we teach now kids can pass the "test" but can they make it in the real world that is devoid of standardized tests to prove mastery? If one of your students is standing over you as the doctor in the ER trying to decide which procedure to do on you to save your life, will she have to have a highlighter, peppermints, a bottle of water, and a TAKS game plan to save you? He goes on to talk about what students need in today's world. And then, this incredible article from USA today came across my desk entitled Schoolteachers, professors differ on what students should know . Any good educator won't be surprised with the topic: "State learning standards may help high school teachers focus their coursework, but college faculty say they're focusing on the wrong things, says a report that finds a "significant gap" between what high school instructors teach ...

The educators working on Horizon have a private Ning that we're not sharing. However, as I post my reflections there, I am going to bring some of them that are appropriate here to my public blog. A student literally RAN to me this morning. "Mrs. Vicki, Mrs. Vicki, I was up all night and my Internet was down, you have GOT to answer my question! WHAT is a SYMPOSIUM!!!" This word came from the Horizon report which he was reading again as he was going to sleep last night. The report talked about a symposium conducted online. Symposium of course is an "SAT word" and I think an important one to move to higher education. But it is not just about that! We teach students here to read with pen and highlighter handy (even our literature books) and he had circled this word in several places. Now, Horizon is not about vocabulary and yet it hit me, it is! I looked again at the language and vocabulary used in this report. I'd be interested if the original authors did a W...

Sorry for the long post but I want to give you all of the details about this project and give you a special invitation to join us. I've tried to contact as many as I can but I haven't gotten to my whole list! Please e-mail me or leave a comment here! My Heart is on the Horizon My heart is on the horizon squinting into the sun wondering where we're going and just what we've just begun! My heart is on the horizon as we forge ahead like a herd of turtles. A better day lies ahead if we'll work to jump the hurdles. The hurdles loom in our minds and in the hearts of men. Link arms with giants and put your heart on the horizon again. Vicki A. Davis The Horizon Project Begins Tuesday On Tuesday, the following classrooms begin a project to look into the future of education based upon the Horizon Report 2007 Edition by the New Media Consortium and Educause : Australia - Presbyterian Ladies College (Melbourne) Grade 10 Digital Innovation (John Turner) Austria - Vienna I...