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Right now my students are enjoying Kodu and making Xbox style video games on the PC to teach digital citizenship. Here are some very advanced student projects and I hope you'll vote! (It ends 14 hours from the time of this post -- some time about 4 am EST April 1st, 2011. So, review and vote. From one of my friends at Microsoft: "It's no secret that the U.S. is falling behind when it comes to science and math. It's estimated that by 2014, there will be 1 million new jobs in science and technology related fields added to the U.S. workforce, but the U.S. will only be able to fill 50% of those jobs with qualified US graduates. Now, more than ever, is the time to support and encourage the next generation to pursue opportunities in science, technology, engineering, mathematics and design. Microsoft's Imagine Cup< http://www.imaginecup.com/ >, the world's premier student technology competition, provides a unique opportunity to showcase positive ...

Image by twm1340 via Flickr Some days you open the milk in the fridge and it has gone bad but you don't realize it until a big clump of pre-cottage cheese has fallen on the cereal. Some days your youngest child comes in with a "Moe" haircut because he wanted to get the hair out of his eyes and couldn't wait until Monday. Some days you go to school to see that the unexpected air conditioner repairmen have trashed your room and that a full 1/3 of the computers are unplugged. Some days you try to move the computers back with the help of the janitor and a monitor and table fall on your head while you're back in the corner. Some days something precious to you has been taken off your desk and you know it is one of 8 students - all of whom deny it. Some days you turn off messaging when your child is with you overseas and the cell phone company messes up and starts charging you for every message your child sent when they returned and sends you a bill for over ...

Education | Mint.com interactive online game to help students see the "impact of smart money decisions." tags: education money finance math math_teacher Cranes For Kids For every crane you make, oshkoxh will donate clothing to the children of Japan. tags: education Japan communityservice ScreenCastle | One Click Screencasting Easy Screencasting tool. This is super simple and from camtasia. WOW! tags: education screencasting techintegrator Screencasting-Presenter: Lorna Costantini - Classroom 2.0 LIVE! A link of a screencasting webinar that came to me. If you w...

Image via Wikipedia But I've spent the morning captivated. Enraptured. I have a segment of my RSS reader called "hotlist" and into it go the blogs and feeds that I can't ignore - my "media diet" as Mark Hurst of Bit Literacy would say. Relationship Gem #1: My friend, David Truss In the first post in my reader -- I had to stop and say - Happy Blogaversary , David Truss - it has been five years and you've given us a heck of a lot more change than a "pair a dimes!" (couldn't resist ;-) Be part of the lives of your friends. My dear friend Julie Lindsay left a comment on Friday's super-popular Facebook Friending 101 for Schools post - it means a lot for her to fire up her VPN and read my blog sometimes. RSS Gem #1 from Marshall K + Bookmark #1 I started with Marshall K's post about departing Twitter co-founder Evan Williams . Not only was it touching for Marshall to show what Evan (cofounder of blogger AND Twitter) mean...

My Own Social Media Experiment « coal cracker classroom Love this response, bonus opportunity by Suzie Nestico. When she emailed and asked for a response and the first would get bonus - 5 replies - listen to what DID get them to respond: "I sent a message to my students via our Google Group around 8:00PM on Sunday night. This message said, “Need any more bonus? Respond to this message for two points. If you tweet it, text it, call your friends, post as you FaceBook status, and another student mentions they got word from you, you get FIVE points.” Guess what? By 11:00PM on Sunday night, I gave out bonus points to over THIRTY of the ninety students. By 8:00AM today, I gave out bonus to an additional eighteen students. In just changing one thing I did, I just reached nearly half of my students. I could have said, “the first ten students to respond will get bonus,” in order to foster competition. But, I tried a bit of that several weeks ag...

Embedding professional development can be as easy as volunteering to judge or serve as an expert advisor for one of our Flat Classroom projects . We mentor you, share rubrics, and bring you into the project as one who can observe closely what is happening. Being a judge and/or an advisor on a Flat Classroom project is excellent PD and also helps you understand the project better, leading in many cases to teachers putting students into the project the following year.  We also encourage teacher-educators to build this into their course and encourage pre-service or in-service teachers to participate. Flat Classroom projects have students studying the trends in Thomas Friedman 's book, the World is Flat - updating his information and mashing it up with current research to produce a wiki chock-full of information and learning experiences. Then, they create final videos on their topic and outsource part of their video to their partners. Expert advisors mentor students on the w...

I've ignored my web browser for a long time - took away every toolbar and just tried to make it lean. That has changed with Firefox 4 . My Favorite Feature of Firefox 4 is the Firefox Sync . I've been using it since downloading the beta version weeks a go and have every computer I use AND my ipod Touch syncing bookmarks. Let's take a look at my start page and close up on my bookmark bar to show how I use this: Here is my browser start window. It is the same wherever I go. Firefox Sync handles that. the MOST important page for you is your Browser start page. It should be the launchpad into productivity for you. Note that I removed google cal because that is now a desktop gadget on my Windows 7 computer. Meet Firefox Sync You can set up your bookmarks / passwords to sync across all platforms where you have signed in. For security reasons the set up on the second computer and your handheld can be cumbersome, but honestly, I like it that way. My low security passwords a...

Image via Wikipedia The great book, The Way We're Working Isn't Working (which I read because of Arvind Grover's review of the book Focus - someone I know and admire) states that 95% of what we achieve is due to our habits. Do you have rituals? Routines? Habits? I've been working on restructuring my habits and I'm finding that I get a lot more done and am at peace with how I'm living my life. Think on this question today. If it is worth doing it is worth setting an appointment with yourself? Other great reads on this topic: The Power of Less Focus: A simplicity manifesto in the Age of Distraction Leo Babauta's blog Zen Habits Related articles Why making big changes is so hard (sebastianmarshall.com) 3 Good Habits That Will Change Your Life Forever! (fitnesstroop.com)

Image via Wikipedia The Dealia's swimsuit catalog came in the mail for my teenage daughter and I handed it to my youngest son and asked him to take it to her. He padded in the den and I heard him say, "Here's your bathing suit catalog, sis. Pick something that won't scar me for life!" Scarred for life? lol. Hmmmm. Not a joke if I think about it. Scarred for Life. As I listened to my book on iPod and cleaned the kitchen, I started thinking that that is what is happening to many of today's teens. We have driver's education because we want to protect kids from themselves. A car is a powerful machine and can kill. We have sex education because we want to protect children as well. Sex is a very intimate thing that shouldn't be taken lightly. Sex can also kill if one contracts various STD's . Cell phones and the Internet are powerful vehicles. Yet parents give kids cell phones like they are the latest gadget, ignoring what can happen if a chi...

Facebook has added an incredible complexity to our lives and relationships for one simple reason: it is in writing. The courts have always put things "in writing" in higher esteem above word of mouth . Now that we are inundated with video, text, and photographs and a set of complex relationships - we end up with things "in writing" that are distributed far beyond our true "friends" into  places that get us in trouble. I don't have all the answers but am wrestling with this problem and want to lay out the facts so you and I can become co-travelers on this journey. I speak from experience, however, having two significant experiences under my belt with the school in this arena, know that there are things that I cannot say about situations that come in out what I share. It can happen because it DOES. This isn't theory. Defining "Friend" Anyone who has seen The Social Network finds Mark Zuckerberg 's use of the word "friend...