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Harness Your Students' Digital Smarts | Edutopia You can see my classroom here - Edutopia came down this year! tags : education , learning The Digital Generation Project | Edutopia Edutopia has posted their digital youth project, funded by the McArthur foundation. It features one of my students, Virginia! So so cool! tags : education , learning Posted from Diigo . The rest of my favorite links are here.

Edutopia has launched their new Digital Youth Project and just shared the video with me that they did of my classroom this year.  Some things make me cringe (ok, my room stays a bit messy) and the students are all over the place - up and down.  And yet, this is my classroom, my students are great, my school is a joy and it is a blessing to teach! Next Thursday Virginia (my student that was profiled) and I will be in an edutopia webinar (sorry I cannot find the link!) This is the Video about Virginia - one of my students!

Image by kiwanja via Flickr Last year, in the blog post Kids Sleep with Cell Phones: Are They Suffering fromConnection Addictio n? students had shared with me a digital citizenship principle that they believed strongly. "In this gcast podcast , I discuss what my son told me about his friends "sleeping with their cell phones" under their pillow and texting through the nightI've talked to three different groups of students and all of them report that over half of their friends will cell phones sleep with them under their pillow on vibrate and text through the night."  This is one common thing that I've shared while traveling around and speaking about digital citizenship -- Digital Health and Wellness and Addictive issues are important. The New York Times now has an article Texting May Be Taking a Toll in their health section about this very same thing. "The phenomenon is beginning to worry physicians and psychologists , who say it is leading to an...

YouTube - MailMerge Mail merge instruction video for sending personalized emails! tags : education , technology , techintegrator Prompt for Windows Fee teleprompter software for windows! OH YEAH!!! tags : education , learning , digitalstorytelling Free teleprompter software - use in your video studio Cool tips on setting up teleprompter software in your video studio!! I WANT TO DO THIS at school. Scripts are one of the top issues we have with filming! tags : education , video , film , technology , digitalstorytelling [Usf] Protecting Children in the 21st Century Act This new act will affect erate schools. Make sure as you plan in the US this summer that you familiarize yourself if you are an erate school! tags : education , learning , technology Posted from Diigo . The rest of my favorite links are here.

The lake was gone. Pumped dry by an unscrupulous farmer, my Dad was heartbroken.  Good farmers, like my Dad, are almost always conservationists.  Dad bought the land and got some government grants to return it to wetland status. Today, we were astounded. My husband and eight year old son went out for a little fishing -- what they saw was something that has had our whole family agape.  Thousands of crane-like birds with golden combs in their hair with their nests full of sky blue eggs and tiny baby hatchlings emerging throughout the day.  Additionally, larger birds are in the high cypresses - cranes, ducks, birds that sound like monkeys (we called them monkey birds because we haven't looked them up yet.)  Bullfrogs the size of my head!!! Never in my whole life have I ever seen anything like this!  We just don't know who to call to tell what has now begun to happen on Dad's land. We estimate that over the next few weeks the rest of the birds will hatc...

Sure, it can be painful, but I learn more about my classroom and myself by hearing anonymous student feedback on the last day of school. Their last assignment is to answer these questions -- when in the last blog post about Last Day Loopbacks, I mentioned the survey, a commenter asked me to share my survey. This survey isn't perfect, but it is the way I ask them to give me feedback.  Here is the survey, verbatim. THIS IS ANONYMOUS!  PLEASE TELL ME YOUR OPINION. Grade: (  ) 8 - Keyboarding (  ) 9 - Computer Fundamentals (  ) 10 - Computer Science (  ) 11 - Digital Graphic Design In your honest opinion, what was the most important thing you learned this year? In your honest opinion, what was the least important thing you learned this year? What do you wish we had spent more time on? What do you wish we had spent less time on? What is something that I need to know so I can be a better teacher next year? Is there anything...

Today was the last day.  My students were filling out their last day surveys (where I ask them to be open and honest and get 70% feedback that is helpful along with a few potshots!)  Most of them wrote their names on the anonymous surveys -- so much for anonymous!! Then, we do the typical, "help Mrs. Vicki clean her room" and as the first class was tidying up around 9:30 am - POW - the Network went down.  I ran to the back room to check the server -- CRASH, it was down - couldn't even get the monitor to come back up -- it was bad!  The students kept cleaning, meanwhile I pulled a whole slew of dust bunnies down on my head, shirt, and pants!  As I dashed between my room and the back server room, I kept being interrupted: Do you know the network is down?  What is wrong with it?  When will it be back up? Really, I don't mind people telling me the network is down.   Despite what some think, I spend a LOT of time with students and so twitter, bl...

The Craig Web Experience: It's "Its"! This is a great explanation of it's and its -- it is crazy but I so often forget this. It's just my weakness I guess! this well written page would be good to share with students. tags : education , learning , grammar Posted from Diigo . The rest of my favorite links are here.

It is 2:30 am in the morning and I just finished leaving comments on the grades of all my students. Sunday I went to Wal-Mart and bought underwear and socks - we're out and I don't have time to wash. Saturday it was paper plates when we ran out of dishes.  Last Thursday I sunburned the back of my left knee at Field Day and so it hurts to bend it.  On Friday I slipped on a hotdog in the lunchroom and hurt my right knee -- can't straighten it.  Today when I went to the office to get some Alleve, I had to bring 2 pills each back for 3 other teachers! The last weeks of school is something that few people really understand.  When I was in business I often thought that teachers had it easy.  To those business people (including my former self) - I ask them to imagine if budgeting, taxes, capital budgets, montly operations review, and quarterly reports were all due in the same 7 days.  Ending school is like nothing you experience in business. Your friends thi...

How to wire Ethernet Cables Yeah, I can now fix the ethernet in the office I tried to do from memory watching the guy who wired the school! Lots of summer projects coming here. Want to wire the xbox so we can watch netflix on it this summer. tags : education , technology , techintegrator Lifehacker - Alpha Geek: How to digitize cassette tapes - Alpha Geek I plan to convert my cassette tapes from growing up this summer - we made tons of interviews each Christmas. tags : education , technology , techintegrator Repair4Laptop: How to Make a Digital Picture Frame - DPF from an Old Laptop or Notebook These are very do it yourself picture frames. tags : education , technology Rockbox - Open Source Jukebox Firmware This program lets you kick up your mp3 player a bit. Not sure that I will put it on my ipod but planning to install on an old iriver. tags : education , technology , music , techintegrator 5 Ways to Retrieve Data Off a Crashed Hard Drive - LaptopLogic.com There are inexpensive pr...

Julie and I are so excited about again building on the Flat Classroom Conference of 2010.  It has been a struggle to continue to find funding and the best fit for us this year is a cooperation with the amazing conference ASB unplugged at the American School of Bombay.  I hope that some of you will join us - and if you came last year that you'll encourage others to take the leap.  This is a project based learning conference where students and teachers work together and separately on meaningful projects as ways to learn about technology and improve our world.  It is always a challenge to pull this together and over the summer we're working to secure funding to help students attend (with scholarship preferences going to schools who have participated in Digiteen, NetGenEd, Flat Classroom, or Horizon.)  The last conference was one of the highlights of my life.  I hope you'll read the information and consider joining us in India !  We all go in two days ear...

Flint River Reflection - Flint River Project Reading reflections of students on the Flint River project. These words bring tears to my eyes: "These past days have been the best school days of my life." - written by a freshman. How many freshmen you know would say something like that? tags : education , learning , teaching , pbl Kindle Publishing: Sign In Publish your blog to kindle now! tags : education , kindle , amazon Posted from Diigo . The rest of my favorite links are here.

Find more photos like this on Flint River Project Literally, I haven't sat in my chair this week! I've been in my room 2-3 hours a day at least, but it has been up working with students and teachers. Truly, next to Flat Classroom Project , the Flint River Project has been one of the best teaching experiences of my life. I really don't know which is better. Sometimes I have people who leave messages here thinking that I advocate some sort of technology-enabled 24/7 connection utopia where we are permanently hooked up to technology. So wrong. As a farm girl, putting your toes in the dirt is so important -- being connected with nature. This past week, the students had science by taking water samples and going back to the lab to determine the water purity - is it drinkable? What quality level is it? They had history by looking at artifacts collected along the riverside in the past. They interviewed experts and historians who live along the river to get their stories....

http://spacemag.tumblr.com Poems from students - submit yours to spacemag tags : education , poetry Kindle DX: Sleeper Agent for Amazon’s Future | Green Business | Reuters New kindle DX - 3 months after the other - what is the difference: "the big differences are that the Kindle DX is 4 inches larger than the one you bought last month and comes installed with a PDF reader." $489 price tag Some of my students are reading on their itouch now. tags : education , technology Posted from Diigo . The rest of my favorite links are here.

Write injuries in the sand, kindnesses in marble." - French Proverb It has been astounding the responses and emails from the post, He Who Laughs - Lasts .  To me, it just confirms that as teachers, in May, we are hungry for encouragement and to know that we shall successfully conclude another year. You see, for those who aren't teachers, every year ends with mixed emotions.  Mixed because no teacher truly wants to not be teaching and yet, we're so unbelievably tired at the end of the yea r that we sometimes feel sort of guilty that we NEED and want a break from it all. I was one of those misinformed, incorrect people when in the business world.  It is humiliating and embarrassing for Mom to remind me some of the things I said to her when she was a teacher - in fact, I'm afraid to admit the things I said because they are so abhorrent to me now. There is nothing easy about teaching.  Although the teachers and I at Westwood are so excited about our immersion p...

Going viral! « On an e-journey with generation Y Yes, This is it! This is what happens. You use a great tool with one class and it spreads to your other classes without you having to say a word! They are teaching each other in their spare time - it is the most amazing thing when you see it happen and Anne Mirtschin is blogging about it from Australia. I love Anne dearly - she is an amazing inspiration to me and works so hard! tags : education , learning , viral , flatclassroom , Google Connecting the Dots: Twitter GMail Gadget Useful Elsewhere How and where you can use the gmail twitter widget -- it may not be in gmail as you suspect. tags : education , learning , twitter Posted from Diigo . The rest of my favorite links are here.

Flint River: Small Town, Big Heart - Flint River Project Excellent piece written by Miller as a preproject reflection and overview of the work we're doing next week! She says: "We see that there is a special attraction between writers and the river. Just as the might[y] Mississippi ran through the pages of Mark Twain's novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the Flint River will flow through the pages of our research and most importantly, through our hearts." tags : education , learning Student's Wikipedia Hoax Fools Newspapers - Science News | Science & Technology | Technology News - FOXNews.com This is a great example of checking your facts. I teach students to always always confirm things they read on wikipedia with another credible source. Looks like newspapers are even less credible than we thought as some reporters need to learn to check their sources! Great article for digital citizenship discussions. tags : education , learning , digiteen , digi...