Cool Cat Teacher Blog is at coolcatteacher.com

David Walsh and Ursula Hynes from Ireland share their cool site ( http://www.mystudymate.ie/aboutus.html ) that started as a school project. In this fascinating project the students hand code in HTML (yes, by hand) and create videos on various topics. They are inviting other schools to participate and it is growing. Related articles Shout Learning: Listening to the Organizers #msief (coolcatteacher.blogspot.com) Moleihi Sekese: Integrating Technology with No Electricity? #msief (coolcatteacher.blogspot.com) Student Sourcing Science: Shout Learning Announced at Microsoft Innovative Educators Conference #msief (coolcatteacher.blogspot.com) Six and Seven Year Old Boys Collect 8 tons of waste in "Trash to Treasure" #msief (coolcatteacher.blogspot.com) Microsoft VP Anthony Salcito: Getting Technology to the Next Classroom #msief (coolcatteacher.blogspot.com) [ #msief ]: Use stumbling blocks as stepping stones: Moliehi Sekese, Lesotho (edu.blogs.com) [ #msief ...

http://www.mystudymate.ie/aboutus.html Amazing website run by students in ireland that is inviting more participants from other locations. tags : education learning flatclassroom Posted from Diigo . The rest of my favorite links are here.

Shea Grisham,North Carolina (USA) and Linda Bradfield (South Africa) The bandwidth issues experienced here in South Africa, called the most wired country in South Africa, have hit home for me.  Really, I haven't been yelling and stomping my feet - it would do no good. I've been doing what I can do -- grabbing my handy camera and recording everything I can to share with you when I get online. This is what people do and why we must be flexible as we collaborate globally.  Great barriers have been overcome by teachers here and lots of hard work has been part of what they've done! Tell Your Story This has truly been a great experience and I hope that even more teachers will apply for the Microsoft Worldwide Innovative Teachers Forum next year. It is a competition and I'm so impressed with those who have made it here. They use a variety of tools -- some Microsoft, some not, but many are using the free tools as a component of what they are doing. Next year, we will...

Interview with Michael Furdyk, Co-Founder TakingIT Global and Claudia Brown from the Smithsonian Institute about the ideas behind their collaboration, scientist's student sourcing data collection, and the projects that will be part of the Shout Learning project. Related articles Student Sourcing Science: Shout Learning Announced at Microsoft Innovative Educators Conference #msief (coolcatteacher.blogspot.com)

[ #msief ]: Sue Redelinghuys, St Cyprian's School, on Creative Buildings, Spaces, Learning and Teaching - Ewan McIntosh | Digital Media & Education Excellent article by Ewan McIntosh from the Microsoft Worldwide Innovative Education Forum in South Africa. As an expert in school architecture, Ewan gives some great insight into the unique and functional design of this school and is a wonderful article to read on that topic for those planning schools. tags : education learning architecture msief Posted from Diigo . The rest of my favorite links are here.

  Moleihi Sekese from Lesotho, Educator's Choice award winner 2009 for the Microsoft Innovative Education Forum, is a teacher who has no electricity in her school.  While studying endangered indigenous plants, she began by having students borrow parent cell phones to text her their observations about the endangered plants. ("I was receiving texts until midnight, she said.) Moleihi Sekese The students had a bake sale to raise money to go to the Internet cafe in town (15 km away) to blog. When they wanted to raise awareness about protecting endangered plants, they had teachers bring charged laptops to school so they could scan the hand drawn images and make flyers in Microsoft Publisher. To create a botanical garden growing these plants, they raised money to go to a botanical garden and filmed how to create their own. They produced the film and then went home and watched it to re-learn the steps for making their own garden to grow the endangered plants and protect the...

Free Tools Highlights of this conversation to me were the conversation on the free tools Microsoft has rolled out for teachers. Things like AutoCollage ,   PhotoSynth , World Wide Telescope , Mouse Mischief ,   SongSmith , and more including the Microsoft Free Tools Guide . There are some really handy, stable offline alternatives that you can install on your computers at school where you have bandwidth issues or just like the stability of having  a program installed on your machine. Skydrive We talked about what Skydrive really means for students (you no longer have to open up that MLA paper into a Google Doc or other tool and lose all your formatting but can use skydrive and open the file on any computer with Microsoft Word or in the free online Microsoft Word editing tool.)  I've found that the only programs that can handle MLA papers are offline word processors so this is amazing news for teachers who have students write term papers! Skydrive also gives us...

When you think that you can't do it any more, meet Naomi Julius. A teacher who had me laughing and crying and inspired to overcome all excuses, particularly those I give myself in my own mind. This teacher often has forty or fifty children in her school in this school in South Africa. Her comments on teaching and love for the children shine through for those who make make excuses for themselves. Sometimes one must see the true face of inspiration to realize that often we limit ourselves by our own mindset. Her school, Hout Bay Secondary School has over five hundred students with fifteen teachers and a teaching principal. A more affluent school down the street has forty teachers for their 500 students! yet, even in the face of injustice she inspires.She has created an "enviro club" and as she greeted us teachers she said: "usually we have one teacher and lots of students. Now we have lots of teachers and a few students, so feel free to grab one and teach them so...

I'll be adding to this flickr stream set. Make sure you view the descriptions to understand the meaning behind each of these photos.  Come back to see more as I upload them.

In this interview with Linda Bradfield from St.John's College in South Africa she discussed the Trash to Treasure project . It is so exciting to see teachers work with parents and make changes in behavior and also improve technology skills. "This project involved 6 and 7 year old boys collaborating with their peers to collect eight tons of waste in six weeks. The boys, together with their parents and teacher, found online information about recycling and collated it in their Trash-to-Treasure wiki. They also used '2Create aa Superstory" to create e-books and used Skype to communicate." p 71 Microsoft Worldwide Education Forum 2010 p 71 This project was presented at the Microsoft Worldwide Innovative Education Forum in Capetown South Africa, 2010. Note: Part of the Microsoft Partners in Learning Worldwide Innovative Education Forum 2010 series. Click the msief tag below to see all posts in this series.

Students at St. Cyprian's band a tree with scientist Josh Falk I want to make this announcement so you can dig in although I will come back and enhance this post with the recordings and photos of the last few days. Microsoft, Taking IT Global , and the Smithsonian Institute have just announced a collaborative three year platform for students to study Land, Air, and Water. This year's focus is on land and will kick off with an extension of the Deforest-action project that first came from the Microsoft Innovative Education Forum in Asia this past year. The website is www.shoutlearning.org and will allow students to interact with scientists at the Smithsonian and each other as they collect data on tree growth. Leading the science team are Geoffrey Parker and Josh Falk of the Smithsonian. Dr. Parker made splash in the news earlier this year as he discovered that trees in Maryland are growing faster than they should be according to traditional data. Anthony Salcito,...

Sometimes meaning can transcend language barriers.  Take this, for example. As I prepare to attend the Microsoft Worldwide Innovative Education Forum in Cape Town, South Africa as my first true event as a "member of the press" I have been following our hashtag for the event #msief   - this tweet came across the tag: "RT @ cafepedagogique : Innovative Teachers already present in the Café Pédagogique blog .. In French http://tinyurl.com/2vsd4ay #msief " Curious, I went to the post aptly titled, Décrocher les étoiles , translated as "Unhook the Stars" and saw French and Arabic coexisting on the same post.  Curious, I started translating. Now, I know that Google Translate is SO FAR FROM PERFECT and there are thousands of you out there who will translate this for me in a much more accurate way, but in this case, the translation that came through Google translate had a certain halting poetic beauty that caused me to stop and reflect: A Pedagogica...

"Voki For Classroom" They are launching voki for the classroom. If you're interested, fill out this form. tags : education Skin-deep? 200 high school girls give up makeup - TODAY Fashion & Beauty - TODAYshow.com "> - Annotated This is how movements now happen! Redefining Beautiful: One Girl at a Time has girls not wearing makeup on Tuesdays. T-shirts and, of course, social media, characterize what these girls are doing (and the guys who support them.) For pundits who think social media is a negative, this is an example of how this generation redefines the world using social networking to spread statements of a generation more quickly than books can be printed. tags : education socialmedia socialnetworking social_entrepreneurship arts_entertainment information_change science_health web2.0 wo...

David Warlick - Flat Classroom 10-3 Keynote - Flat Classroom Project David Warlick's keynote for Flat Classroom in celebration of our 20th project! tags : education flatclassroom What Scares Us? - 1 - Health Topics - MSN Health & Fitness I find this series on what frightens us to be completely fascinating. The number one fear being service interruptions and #2 being social media embarrassment are certainly signs of our times! I'm not sure if they have ranked these in order of prominence or not, but it does make some interesting reflections upon who we are as a people when we're afraid of our cell phone service being interrupted. tags : education learning Posted from Diigo . The rest of my favorite links are here.

Webb's Wide World » Blog Archive » Cape Town Beckons! One of the teachers in this year's worldwide innovative education forum talks about how she entered. Consider entering for next year for this great event. I'll be blogging next week from Cape Town South Africa as part of this amazing event! tags : education learning collaboration Decisions to Make About Blogging | EDUCAUSE Educause guide to implementing a blog in the college classroom. tags : education Kentwood High School -::- Covington, WA Sample high school efolio requirement tags : education learning Posted from Diigo . The rest of my favorite links are here.

Image by J Patz via Flickr In my email today: "Could you imagine sending me a short quote about why you think it is important to teach using technology and/or why there should be global connections?" Here was my answer. Our students who participate in Flat Classroom and Digiteen are graduating from high school able to say that they have collaborated on a global basis. Sure, twenty first century skills are important, however, twenty first century connections are just as important. Additionally, there are now three forms of writing: traditional essay writing, first person blogging, and collaborative writing such as done on a wiki. There are also other forms of expression. We already have: written expression and verbal expression but now we also have audio expression and visual expression (through video and photography.) To be a well rounded, well educated student they should be able to express themselves well in all of these forms of expression.  There ...

It was amazing - at 5:00 pm Eastern Time I brought up the chat feature on the Digiteen Ning (FYI - chat is private for members only) before 5:01 pm - I had two students from Iowa and a couple from Korea in the chat. Within six minutes we had 8 students in the chat! I just went back in to write this post and had this conversation: The first mistake was one of using IM speak. I talked about how we don't use IM speak because it leaves out those who have English as a second language and we embarked on a great discussion about just that point. The students were amazing and very up front about the conversation and having live chat on the Ning. They were just "there." This is what floors me - this generation is SO eager to connect. They want it and in some ways need it. Live chat pulls them in like a magnet. So, we have 900 something kids on the project but to immediately have 7-8 kids pulled into a technology that quickly makes me think. When we put in new technologi...

sharon's share: Collaborative Keynote - Angela Maiers and Vicki Davis Notes from the collaborative keynote from ACTEM 2010 that Angela and I did on Friday. Excellent overview. tags : education learning collaboration Google Flu Trends Explore flu trends around the world. Great for class discussions. You can also download world flu activity data. tags : education learning health govt_business science_health worldonline www_world prediction seedlingsgeekoftheweek's Bookmarks on Delicious Lots of cool bookmarks from my friends in Maine - so many great classroom ideas. Just scroll through the list of the things recommended by educators. tags : education tools Posted from Diigo . The rest of my favorite links are here.

Image via Wikipedia Image via Wikipedia Popular Mechanics has a great article on the brilliant ideas. In this month's issue, they feature a new cellphone microscope that can: "diagnose disease cheaply and effectively anywhere in the world." I love how the originator of this technology, Aydogan Ozcan, University of California, Los Angeles ,  says: "“The key to everything is the cellphone,” Ozcan says. In 1990, fewer than 12.5 million people worldwide had them; today, 4.6 billion do. While conventional lens-based microscopy has essentially plateaued, fierce competition causes cellphone-camera technology to advance rapidly even as prices plummet. Eventually, Ozcan believes, point-of-care facilities in the U.S. will begin replacing expensive and time-consuming lab procedures with cellphone-based diagnostic tools. “Once insurance companies start to accept this,” he says, “we will have better, more affordable healthcare and better quality of life.” I seem to also thi...