Cool Cat Teacher Blog is at coolcatteacher.com

From the Classroom 2.0 Ning today: FromWill Richardson ( www.Weblogg-ed.com ) today. Seems like a great way for Classroom 2.0 members to nominate each other! ---- This request comes from Jim Daly of the George Lucas Educational Foundation, though the award is being co-sponsored by Yahoo! Teachers: The 2007 Mashup “Totally Wired Teacher Award” will honor a trailblazing teacher who has successfully pioneered the innovative and educational use of social media (blogs, wikis, social networking, photo/video sharing) in the classroom. The award-winner likely had to overcome challenges from parents and administrators in order to use the technology, but because they understand how students use social media outside of school, they persevered with their initiative and worked collaboratively with students, ultimately sharing their insight and knowledge with the larger teaching community. If you have anyone in mind, send their names, titles, etc. and a paragraph or two as to why they are deserving...

If you have luddites who aren't comfortable with the computer in your school, hold on. Computers are coming to your tables, walls, filing cabinets, doors, and oh my goodness, perhaps even that flat surface on the student desk. At the everything D conference that I blogged about yesterday, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer will announce Microsoft Surface . The article says: " [Surface is] the first in the company’s new category of surface-computing products that it has touted as “breaking down traditional barriers between people and technology.” Surface has a 30-inch display in a table-like format that can recognize physical objects. It allows, according to Microsoft, “hands-on, direct control of content such as photos, music and maps. … through natural gestures, touch and physical objects.” Surface can also recognize objects embedded with identification tags similar to bar codes....Surface, as Microsoft sums it up, brings an “opportunity to create technology that would bridge the ...

Christy Tucker has a fascinating analysis of her delicious network, she says: In this screenshot, Vicki Davis ( brightideasguru ) is at the top, Wes Fryer ( wfryer ) is in the lower left, and Will Richardson ( willrich ) is in the lower right. My network ( christyinsdesign ) is in the center with the colored lines. Looking at this image, I can see that Wes and Will have several people in common, but Vicki only has one network connection shared with Wes and none in common with Will. I was a little surprised by that; I would have expected a bit more overlap there. Perhaps there is not as much overlap as we might think! Just go to Delicious network explorer and type in your username. This is a great answer to the conspiracy theorists as it explores the network in a fascinating way. The graphic did not come out very well but it shows that David Jakes and ChristyInsDesign are very innerconnected -- Hey Jude has some connections with Christy and Danita Russell and I share a few common ...

I'm trying to find the live stream for this (if there is one) but Bill Gates and Steve Jobs are appearing live together tomorrow at the D: All Thing Digital Conference put on by the Wall Street journal. For live updates check out the blog at http://allthingsd.com/ I did a little digging and if you're quick, you can share the questions YOU want to ask at http://kara.allthingsd.com/20070523/questions-for-bill-and-steves-excellent-adventure/. Join in! I am posting my question as we speak. Let's innundate them with questions from educators!

Pam Shoemaker is on edtechtalk.com tonight as we talk about training teachers. Here is the tentative agenda, and as always we will expand this and discuss! Order of the Evening: Welcome = Cheryl WOW2 Moments -- Cheryl, Sharon, Vicki, Jen Pam Shoemaker -- Pam's Blog: http://shoemap.edublogs.org Intro Web 2.0 Usergroup Initiative 8th Grade Moodle - SS Curriculum/Michigan tech proficiency/Michigan high school on-line learning requirement how many teachers are beginning to use this? when did you start, all things you will probably cover. I am very interested, we are just beginning our moodle over the summer. Any advice, I would welcome it. The moodle will be for all users, not just early adopters.- from Cheryl Walled Lake Laptop Program: http://walledlake.k12.mi.us/AAL Staff Development

George Siemens has planned another blockbuster FREE educational conference. I highly suggest sending your teachers and administrators to http://www.umanitoba.ca/learning_technologies/conferences/foe/ to sign up and to participate. Not only will they learn but they will USE the technologies like Elluminate that are going to be must-haves for the school of the future. I'm excited about presenting this Saturday morning at 8 am EST with my friend and "co-worker" Julie Lindsay -- "My Seatmate Lifes in China: The Imperative for Global Collaborative Projects." ( See the schedule .) I hope you'll join in and participate. Here is the information that George Siemens mailed out this morning -- you need to go over to his site to subscribe to receive updates. We’re excited to begin our Future of Education conference on June 4. A brief introductory audio welcome is available here: http://www.elearnspace.org /media/FOE2007/intro.mp3 Over the duration of the next ...

Simulpost with TechLearning The Horizon project has been fascinating, not only because of the project itself but also because of the intentional involvement of students as young as ten in the peer review process. Thank you to our 5 peer reviewer classrooms from 5 countries! Sharon Peters did a GREAT job with high school review and having it mid-project really gave the students excellent feedback and fuel to move ahead! Chrissy Hellyer ( Teaching Saggitarian - 7th grade - New Zealand) , Kim Coifino (8th grade - Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia - Read Kim's student reviews .) and Lisa Durff with her 7th grade USA class are also involved in the process, and Brandt Schneider's Web Design Class (Read Brandt's assignment and reviews .) Several peer reviewers have tackled middle school. Graham Wegner from Australia - (who does such great job over at his Teaching Generation Z blog) has been working to formulate his thoughts on the best practices of peer review of this sort of proje...

I needed a laugh today and here it is. The summary video from a 9th grader. He changed from a French accent to an asian accent in midstream. I laughed so hard. After being up till around 1:45 am last night finishing up grades, I needed it!

What is going to happen in the future? This is what the students say on the Horizon project: From looking at the new ways to buy, read, and sell books are changing it is possible that in the future there will be no more books they will be on the computer or be shown on the wall with projectors or some kind of laser projector. They are coming out with flexible paper it is called a substrate based color electronic paper . The paper might take the place of regular paper and will also help with the global warming epidemic. These growing technological tools are going to lead to the fact that the demand for specific jobs such as programmers, webmasters, and the likes of "pro-bloggers" are going to be increased dramatically. And blogging has already started to affect the labor market that job opportunities for those who are experienced in blogging are exploding. ( Indeed.com - job search engine, "blogging" search ) In addition, with the rising and spreading trend of '...

As I am grading the Horizon project, I just had to share this quote written from the heart of a teenager. He was discussing Massively Multiplayer Gaming as it relates to governments and says: "The Governments need to realize that while these games seem like just games to all the politicians, to kids and teenagers and some adults these games are why they wake up in the morning. Identity theft, kids thinking that the games are real, and sexual harassment are the three biggest threats when logging on to any one of these virtual online games. our governments need to find a way to regulate these games because the truth of the matter is that t hese games are the future and we need a safe future. This is the truth and if we sit back and do nothing about it our future will be dark indeed..." While this wiki isn't perhaps one of our highest scoring ones, there are nuggets like this throughout that give us a glimpse into the passion of students and their desire to have safety in a...

The amazing Brian Crosby is on WOW2 tonight over at Edtechtalk.com at 9 pm EST. What a great thing to do while grading -- just catch the stream and listen (click on one of the channels.) If you wish to go into the chat , you can click the chat button on the left and ask questions and chat with us! Brian writes the Learning is Messy blog but we became entranced with his classroom when we saw his work to bring a child who has leukemia back into the classroom via Skype. (See my blog post about it.) Brian is also using wikis with fourth graders to explore animals and had a recent Visit from Krista McCauliff's mother. Brian works in a district with many low income students and is showing that yes, Web 2 works anywhere to meet very real needs. He is a very good teacher with an upbeat inspirational message. I hope you'll join us to meet this amazing educator tonight! There are so many of you amazing teachers out there, it is so great that we have a place over at edtechtalk.com ...

This is just a quick thought to all of you teachers out there who are so busy that you cannot breathe! It is tough with all of the things that we have on us and so many people misunderstand the teaching profession, "Oh, I'd love to have my summers off... you teachers don't have to work in the 'real world.'" To which I respond, "I've worked in the 'real' world, and I love the classroom, although my hours are MUCH longer, and I make so much less, the work is very rewarding. I feel like teaching is the most noble calling on earth and nothing is more real to me than my precious, wonderful students." I truly feel that way. Teaching is a noble profession without which the civilized world would have no hope. What we do in our classroom is very important and each of us play a part in the grand scheme of society. Taking time to blog, share, discuss, and be a part of this new educational revolution is also very important. So, my advice today as...

Thank you to Christopher Sessums for sharing this video about Facebook. I'm going to share it with my students. (I also found it on youtube but the link above is another site.) Again, educate students about their privacy. What they don't know may come back to haunt them. Their privacy is a very valuable thing! It should be treated with care. tag: Facebook , Christopher Sessums

Just a note! I have grading to do today but want to listen in on the Webheads Conference, so I went over to http://www.edtechtalk.com/listen and am listening to the current sessions. Jeff Lebow and Dave Cormier are doing an incredible service to the educational community and are going into the sessions and "snagging" the stream out. This way you can listen and grade or work. The only disadvantage is you don't see the slides nor can you chat, but that is an advantage when you need to grade! I'm listening to Professional Development using Wikis. EdTechTalk does an incredible FREE service for the educational community. I find myself over there more and more each week. So, even though I don't show up in the session, I am listening! (We get out of school on Friday and I have to grade everything!)

All educators who are online and have a moment, should take advantage of the incredible resource put on by the " WebHeads " -- this group of people has worked very hard to bring us an incredible K-20 confe rence for educators. The CURRENT event can be seen at the bottom of http://www.webheadsinaction.org/ . You'll see more training that you can get at a real conference and you don't even have to get dressed. It runs through tomorrow! I spent some time learning from George Siemens this morning and particularly liked this graphic. He made a couple of important points that I put in my notes: We have: Content Conversations Connections He says that often the connections we make are of more significant future value than the content or conversations themselves that are currently transpiring. The School in Liverpool that Eliminated Laptops Because the Results didn't show He also talked about what a poor job that many of us who see and are realizing the value of technolo...

I've been grading the efolio portion of the 9th grade portfolios. These are done on our wiki. Here are a couple of highlight videos that I particularly liked. Note: the video he talked about in this was never uploaded. We probably upload about 60% of our videos, some of them, while great for classroom use and discussion may not be appropriate for being available on the Internet.

From Julie's Blog today, I found these videos from the horizon project: Atif from the ISD school in Bangladesh has done a great job with his mobile phone video. Wow! Or how about Ginger from the Shanghai School in China. I am going to enjoy watching all of the videos this summer. I am learning so much and am excited about the quality of these videos and what I am learning from them. David Warlick may not know this, but an e-mail that I received during February/March from him directly impacted this project. He said: "Off and on, over the past many months, the thought has emerged that there has to be a way of utilizing this read/write web to affect the changes we are looking for in education leadership. But I've drawn a blank. I'm not young enough. But it occurred to me this morning that we get the students to do it for us." David, thank you for your continuing leadership. You could not have known that Julie and I were in the midst of planning horizon and t...

We sat down with Terry via Google Docs recently and answered his questions about horizon. Thank you, Terry, for your kind words and for your promotion of global collaborative projects. Had a great youth summit session today in elluminate (even though I was home sick) we elluminated anyway! It was wonderful and full of the ups and downs of all learning. (This was their second time in elluminate.) I will share the link here when elluminate sends it to me! Hear the student presentations from today in class: https://sas.elluminate.com/p .jnlp?psid=2007-05-16.1039.M .ADFF8C3E3AAFB018014C360A1494E B.vcr

If you're online right now, Stephen Downes is joining us over at edtechtalk.com right now! Some exciting discussions planned with Sharon Peters moderating!

This is the video from the Virtual Worlds project manager, Collin, and co-stars his partners in this project: I also love Andrew S's vision of the future with virtual worlds which he animated in Flash/ Movie Maker. What a fascinating project! I've learned so much from all of the students and look forward to sharing many videos with you from all classrooms. I share these first just because I watched them being made! This next is where you go if you want to understand the gaming world and virtual worlds and how they tend to become a part of your life. This student was actually the overlord of a "clan" in Halo for a period of time that was the top in the world. The video of Halo was of him playing the game and was shot by a member of his clan! Fascinating! This was the key to unlocking his interest in this project! tag: hz07 , virtual_worlds

The road into a new horizon is full of bumps as shown by today's youth summit. I thought my students did well for their first time in elluminate. After their obligatory 5 minutes of playing with the whiteboard, we settled down to business with the students improving as they went. Here is the recording (bumps and all!) https://sas.elluminate.com/p .jnlp?psid=2007-05-15.1116.M .ADFF8C3E3AAFB018014C360A1494E B.vcr For the upcoming schedule (in EST unless you've logged into airset), this is the calendar. http://horizonproject.wikispaces.com/Student+Summit

The youth summit kicks off in about 30 minutes. We're excited! Just a quick preview. I've been looking at videos and will be sharing many of them with you here. Here is one from the project manager of social networking. (Yes, it stars me as "Mean Cat teacher.") All of the teams have worked very hard and I will make sure that I share with you from all of them!

a simulpost with TechLearning Yesterday at the Rotary Club I sat there with tears in my eyes listening to my sixth grader win an essay contest. Only I and a few others knew that only three years earlier he could barely compose a legible paragraph. It was third grade and my son suddenly went from a high achieving, well behaved child to one who was struggling emotionally and mentally with the tasks at hand. I knew something was wrong. Children don't just change behavior like that. I have a sister with a learning challenge (we don't call them disabilities in our family) and knew that he was coming up against something that he could not overcome. The public school said his test scores were too high for them to test so we eliminated our family vacation between his third and fourth grade year and went to the incredible icon of testing in our area, the Atlanta Speech School. While I won't ...

Steve Hargadon has posted the schedule for Edubloggerconn on the wiki. It is scheduled for Saturday, June 23rd from 8:30 am to 5:00 pm but you can drop in and out. Check who is attending and add your name. We'll talk more later!

source: San Jose Mercury News The Encyclopedia of Life ( www.eol.org ) will take approximately 10 years to create according to its founders, who will announce the effort in Washington DC today. Who are they? Some of the world's leading scientific institutions and universities in the world. They plan to catalog and share information on all of the species of animals and will allow information on SIGHTINGS from "amateurs." Projected to take 300 million pages, "The MacArthur and Sloan foundations have given a total $12.5 million to pay for the first 2 1/2 years of the massive effort, but it will be free and accessible to everyone." From the great article over at the San Jose Mercury News , ""It could be a very big leap in the way we do science," said Cristian Samper, acting secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, one of seven museums, universities and labs to launch the encyclopedia. "This is a project that is so big, not even the Smithsoni...

Disney announces that they have sold 2 million online videos through iTunes, 23.7 million shows, and 92 million ad-supported show episodes. The article at ZDNET discusses how Disney has been revamping their online activities to include more social networking capabilities and a move towards more video on demand services delivered through the Internet. Are classrooms moving online? We continue to move towards Internet delivery of all electronic media, but I have to ask myself how well we are moving in that direction in our classrooms. What does it take to work at Google? Last night in the WOW2 webcast with Christin Frodella, director of Google Educators network, we talked about what it takes to work at a place like Google. She stated that the "ability to ask questions" and the "ability to be self motivated without someone looking over your shoulder" and "curiosity" and "passion for your profession" as vital for working at Google. She didn't ...

Interesting thing here -- I've congratulated the wrong person -- the creator as seen in the comments is Jbrenamen. It looks like he did a remix. I think some interesting conversations will happen about this one! Congratulations to Karl Fisch who is adding to his growing list of awards with his SlideShare presentation Shift Happens. (Hat tip for this info to Jose Luis Cabello via twitter. ) Slideshare has named this presentation "World's Best Presentation!" Congratulations, Karl John?! Here is the presentation, see for yourself! Remember, the great thing about slideshare is that you can go over there and comment on any individual slide! And Karl John wins an Alienware laptop! Supercool! Connecting us all! And isn't this an amazing world that let's a person from Centennial, Colorado ? can contribute in such an amazing way. (Or in Camilla, Georgia or all of these other remote places -- I often wonder if much of the innovation happening is because now ...

Thanks to my friend Steve Dembo for sharing this chill-bump inducing video. WOW! Sometimes we need the pictures and stories like this to share the story of what people can do to prevent bullying. Of course, we always have to be careful that by "dropping notes" as kids do that we keep balance. Often those who bully are victims themselves at home. tag: stopcyberbullying , bullying , bullying prevention , Steve Dembo , youtube

From my new MUST READ friend Ryan Bretag , this information about a meeting tomorrow night, Sunday at 9 pm PST on EduIsland about how educators can get involved in the teen grid educational areas of second life. I may be asleep (or grading) but if I'm awake, I'll be there! Here is the info! EduIsland II welcomes the Eye4You Alliance Teen Island and the ELVEN Institute! ELVEN helps pre-K12 educators and librarians to integrate new technologies into teaching and learning, whilst Eye4You Alliance’s office on this island represents the creation of a direct communication channel between MG and TG adult educators. On Sunday at 9am PDT Eye4You will be holding an open public meeting on EduIsland II that will discuss how adult educators can become involved in Teen Grid education. tag: secondlife , education , teaching , Ryan Bretag

Karl Fish has a great post commenting on the recent article in the Denver Post that 4 out of 5 experts agree on the accuracy of wikipedia, Karl says. "..there was no mention of whether any of the scholars contributed to the Wikipedia article they were reviewing.... It’s not like I expect the reviewers to take hours (or days) to clean up the articles, but you would think they might take an extra five or ten minutes to modify a few things since they’re there anyway. It almost seems like the thought never crosses their minds – or at least the mind of the reporter. It seems like such an obvious question to ask, and include the answer in the article. ... I find it interesting that the print version doesn’t include the URL for Wikipedia (much less for the particular topics), and that the online version doesn’t include links. Here is what I said in response: I agree - here is the difference -- the expert can actually EDIT the entry (novel idea) so that the information IS accurate -- c...

Julie and I spent 2 1/2 hours today in elluminate, learning how to use elluminate and then the last 30 minutes troubleshooting the BLASTED time zone problem that has caused problems with every online conference we've attended from K12online to the connectivism conference. And guess what, after much hacking and struggling -- the problem is solved! (If you really want to hear our voices and how we work together, you're welcome to listen to the recording -- https://sas.elluminate.com/p .jnlp?psid=2007-05-05.0542.M .ADFF8C3E3AAFB018014C360A1494E B.vcr ) Now, if you don't believe me (most of you who have pulled your hair out won't) -- go to this wiki page - http://horizonproject.wikispaces.com/Student+Summit and take a look at the calendar. Press month and notice something! ***NOTE: After some testing, we found that it only converts on the page IF YOU ARE LOGGED INTO YOUR AIRSET ACCOUNT -- the following is a note from Julie on the Ning - Well, maybe not as good as we tho...

This tonight in a discussion on the social networking wiki of the horizon project between students on opposite sides of the globe: katttrinaa writes: question It's not all about MySpace and Facebook. Explore the possibilities of the tools used in social networking for the purposes of your wiki. Tools, tools, tools! emphasize the tools! what do you mean by tools? Posted Today 12:30 am - [delete] casey12350 writes: re: question things such as bulletins, groups, blogs, friends, pictures, movies, reviews, features, profile, status, personal interests...tools are what makes social networking exciting for students to use. by tools, i mean that you don't need to say, "myspace and facebook shouldn't be used in school because they would be a distraction." you need to examine what makes students want to be involved with social networking. Note that we allow IM speak in the discussion areas although not on the final wiki product. I wish that educators could ...

OK, I'm testing Joost which is a pretty hot commodity. Somehow, they considered me worthy of testing it and thus far it is pretty cool. I got a notification a bit later that I had 3 invites and gave them out on the WOW2 show a couple of weeks a go. Now, the number has been multiplied greatly and I have 100. So, to invite you to joost, the way to watch TV on your PC, all you have to do is comment here and share: 1) Your favorite Web 2 tool in the classroom that you are using RIGHT NOW! and (What keeps you "juiced" about Web 2) 2) One thing you do to stay motivated when you have a tough day! (Pardon the pun but how do you stay juiced!) And then, make sure that your e-mail is in the blogger profile (or contact me and give me your e-mail) tag: hz07 , Web2 , joost , Vicki A Davis , teaching , education

Julie shared a great list of global projects today . There are so many great projects coming from the grassroots efforts of educators, it is time for you to join in as you plan the curriculum for next year. How will your students collaborate globally? Will they begin to understand their part in a global world? My students were complaining today: "Mrs. Vicki, it is like this. WE ARE SO CUT OFF IN NORTH AMERICA! With our time zones it is harder for us to work on this project than it is for the other students who tend to be awake closer to the same time. We are frustrated because of our time zone and how it disconnects us with the world!" My goodness! I guess I've been a little envious of Julie who is able to help Ed and John and Barbara more effectively because her school day overlaps theirs. Mine does not! These are the things that we don't observe or notice without such collaboration. I believe that such projects make us less ethnocentric and more globally mind...

We've found that it is vital to have mid course corrections in big projects like horizon. In such a project 100% participation from all students is the objective and it takes a lot of one on one coaching to get that done! But what if one or two still hang on after this bit, this is what we are doing, and honestly, I think it is a great idea because it is VERY reflective of what I saw in the business world. We posted this on the class announcements page today: Collaborative projects in the real world often require a "mid course correction" based on current circumstances on the project. This is your opportunity to make such a mid course correction. You have until sunset on Sunday (this is the horizon project, after all) to combine any two of your impact wikis. All topics must still be covered and you must link to the "old" wiki so that information (edits and discussions -- evidence of collaboration) will be preserved. This will allow you to put together effecti...

Hey, if you're online, come on over to WOW2 where we're talking with some amazing elementary educators tonight led by Elementary Collaborator extraordinaire, Jen Wagner. It is going to be supercool and we're going to max out on the number in the skype!