Daily Education and Technology News for Schools 06/16/2012
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9-Year-Old Who Changed School Lunches Silenced By Politicians | Wired Science | Wired.com
This Wired News post is about the 8 year old in Scotland who took a camera to school to document the non nutritious lunches she was being fed at school. She can't any more because the government won't let her take a camera to school. This website, gone viral, is creating a firestorm as kids from around the world are sending in photos of their own lunches.
In two weeks her district was letting kids have unlimited salads, fruit, and bread. She's a neat kid because instead of basking in glory, she decided to ask followers to donate to Mary's Meals that helps kids get lunches in africa.
I find this to be a restriction of freedom of speech but think many us schools will do the same. When people want to hide from the truth - they ARE hiding something. Period. -
This is an excellent post by Alfred Thompson about how the IT department should view its role. This is a tough one and one reason I've drug my feet on handing over too many responsibllities to an IT firm. They want to lock it down and I want freedom for the teachers. I am a teacher. Neither do I want them to have to wait too long to get things fixed. Some great reflections here on the tensions between IT and Teachers -- just remember that we have incredible, excellent people in both jobs but we do need to make sure that we all realize that we are serving students.
It is all about relationships. If you pick one Computer science person to follow it should be Alfred Thompson. He's rock solid in understanding programming and computers but makes it understandable to the Average Joe or Average Sue (like me.) In fact, he was one of the persons in the edublogosphere (besides Stephen Downes) to be kind to me and treat me with respect. That is why his name is in the foreward of my book Flattening Classrooms, Engaging Minds. He's a great person and genuine and one of those I adore. -
Looking forward to serve as a judge again at this year's Microsoft Partners in Learning US forum where 102 educators will compete. It was fantastic last year and I valued the interactions with the judges from other areas. Leigh Kolbert, Teach a Kidd, Alfred Thompson, and Steven Anderson will be judging this year with me.
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This useful presentation sharing the research about the need for assignment web pages was another great thing I found through Pinterest. Read through the presentation, it is quite compelling that all assignments should be available to students outside of school.
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Classroom resource collections index - Resource Topics - TES
A list of collections for teachers. Summer is a great time to get ideas and this is a place I like to go because everything shown is free.
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Father's Day Card - Resources - TES
Father's day is June 17. You can click through and download this finger painted card for Dad if you haven't done anything else yet. Just remember Father's day! (And grandpa too!)
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In the news - Hard-working teachers - Resources - TES
This survey out of the UK reflects with what we see here in the US:
"Eight out of 10 teachers are concerned about the effect that the “hidden hours” spent working behind the scenes are having on their health. Research conducted for TES found that over two-thirds of the primary and secondary school teachers surveyed had sacrificed at least one night’s sleep over the past three months in order to complete all their tasks."
We do need efficient ways to do things. This page has some great ideas about how to handle teaching furstrations, mental health as a teacher, and the collections that you can use to plan your lessons. -
Goodreads | Best Education Technology Books (4 books)
Working on a list of books for education technology on Goodreads. You can add and vote on books. I've just started this but was hoping that many of you would add books onto the list. I've got my own book on the list, so it would be biased unless more people add your own best books. It needs to be more comprehensive. Thanks.
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Do we need (great) principals?
Yes, we need great principals - I totally agree with George Corous in this excellent post. I couldn't live without my principal. He's overworked and likely underpaid but he is a good, honest man who cares about the kids and the teachers. He's not perfect (who is) but he's an incredible leader. I'm thankful to serve at the school with him. I'm so glad that George wrote this post, which I think will become a must read for principals.
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This is the goodreads page for Flattening Classrooms, Engaging Minds. Thanks to our friends who are commenting and saying you want to read it. We'd appreciate ratings and reviews. Thanks.
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Goodreads | Blog Post: Anatomy of Book Discovery: A Case Study
This is a great case study about the "power of habit" - a phenomenal book that I highly recommend. It talks about how a book grows and gets "discovered." Of course, it helps to start with a great book.
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Anita McAnear - conference chair for ISTE is retiring. She's a phenomenal person and has done a great job. Her job is open and they need to fill this soon and I know that many of you are running conferences now. I know because I've been to them and you ROCK. Will you pass this along because this is an important job for education technology.
US - OR - Eugene, The Conference Program Chair is a key position that develops and implements the priorities and goals for ISTE’s conference and professional learning programs. Candidates must have a master’s degr -
Songs for Children Sung by Characters from Shakespeare by Daeshin Kim — Kickstarter
I got this email on my Facebook page - I thought some of you might be interested in this educational kickstarter project.
"Hello Vicki, I wanted to tell you about my family's project - we wish to introduce Shakespeare to young children through song, and we have been working very hard to get these songs professionally recorded, with a view to publishing them together with a picture book, and as part of an interactive app.
Yesterday, the Royal Shakespeare Company's myShakespeare blog published something I wrote about my 4-year-old daughter's introduction to the wonderful world of Shakespeare (http://myshakespeare.worldshakespearefestival.org.uk/how-shakespeare-helped-my-4-year-old-daughter-to-acclimatize-to-life-in-paris-by-daeshin-kim/) and our project has also been featured in the Folger Shakespeare Library at http://folgereducation.wordpress.com/2012/06/12/kinderbard/
We are writing to you because we are nearing the end of a crowdfunding campaign, we have exhausted all of our resources and ideas, and we need a miracle. We were wondering if you had any advice to give, any resources to point us towards, any contacts to share, so that we may turn this around.
Ours is a small family project, but we really want to create the best possible quality product (it costs a lot of money to produce an album and publish a book and app!) - we hope you will be moved by what we have done so far, and how far we have left to go, and any help at all would be very greatly appreciated." -
SocialEdCon 2012 - Classroom 2.0
If you're attending ISTE and can get there a tad early, SocialEdCon (formerly edubloggercon) has always been one of my FAVORITE things to do. I'll miss a smidge of the morning to do a keynote smackdown with Steve Hargadon, Kathy Shrock but the rest of the time I plan to be there.
I plan to have my daughter there with me some of the time. -
ISte'S CARET database has now been replaced by TREx. I've noticed some sessions at ISTE about how to use this tool. It has an "add content" button which tells me they are crowdsourcing the exchange of research.
