Cool Cat Teacher Blog is at coolcatteacher.com

So much going on this week. As you can perhaps tell from my lower number of posts, having two of my three kids in middle school, and six classes has put a dent in my blogging time. I'm still here, though, working to innovate with whatever time I can scratch out. For a while I've been fascinated by the use of the backchannel. I first saw its effective use this summer when some bloggers had a skypechat during Will Richardson's session and posted it . It is also such a great way to give a voice, and we rely on it heavily for the Wow2 show each Tuesday night. So, this week, during a test review on Thursday, I unveiled the backchannel in the room using Meebo's virtual room feature. Here is what I observed: Initially kids treat it like a playground This is the case with everything electronic. They treat electronic "places" as playgrounds because I think they are not used enough for "professional" reasons. Part of what I teach is to effectively, profes...

If you're looking for a motivating project and you teach science -- this flu flux contest opens up September 15th - October 28th and has you creating videos about how people get the flu and how to prevent it in three categories: kids and the flu, sports and the flu, and flu in the workplace. This would make a meaningful digital storytelling - science cross curricular project! tag: science , youtube , contests , digitalstorytelling , digitalvideo , DV , hz08

This fascinating story is chock full of the web in more ways than one! This 200 YARD spider web has etymologists from around the world a buzz after a biologist for the park posted a photo of it, on ... you guessed it.. the Web! The park manager says that she "just wishes the entomologists would check out the spider web in person instead of arguing about it over the Internet." The Web won't stick around long because most of the spiders will be dead soon -- but rangers report that: "you can literally hear the screech of millions of mosquitoes caught in those webs." Entymologists are trying to figure out if the spiders are constructed by "social cobweb spiders" or just webs that spiders connected. What we can learn from this: 1) Sometimes you have to see it in person. It is one thing to observe on the Internet, and another to see it in person. In person observations, are more meaningful. Many people have "observed" my classroom through the In...

I have a new way of keeping class notes and outlining. I've created a template page on my wikispace, and set up a page for each chapter of my computer science book. I've started doing it this way after receiving feedback from my students last year and spending some time working with it this year. In fact, if you have a wiki centric classroom, you really should set up templates for your major items to put in the headings that you need! I'm going to use them more extensively this year! You can see this week's work including a nifty project using the classtools.net timeline program and a slideshare embedded about technology convergence. We're still finishing up the slideshare, an inevitably, I have students use their whole names. I'm working to be more organized and intentional so that students know where things are on the wiki, just like they do in my classroom. tag: wiki , education , teaching , slideshare , classtools , timeline , lesson plans ,...

Warning: I'm not talking about technology in this post, but about attitude. If you're looking for technology, wait for the next one! Attitude is one of a teacher's most precious possessions. The busy-ness of my own life right now would really get me down if I let it! It is easy to get discouraged. And I'm not any special case, most teachers I know are often worn to a frazzle! So, as I think about how much I have to do or haven't done (like the fact I missed Blog Day 2007 yesterday ), today I share my reflections on how I stay up while working in the highest burn out profession around: Don't go on guilt trips. The only way to go on a guilt trip is if you pack your bags and go yourself. So don't pack and don't go! This comes from my Mom, I have to work on this one and she tells me this at least once a week! There is someone in my life right now who always wants to make me feel insufficient because I haven't met this person's standard of goo...

simulpost with TechLearning Dr. Robert McLaughlin was one of our guests on the Wow2 show this past Tuesday night and made some interesting comments about and the importance of tapping into deep web resources. I think that many of us, myself included just forget about the importance of the deep web. And with fully 95% of deep web resources being free, there is no excuse for not exposing students (and ourselves) to this amazing part of the Internet. With the "deep web" , some experts estimate that 50 times the data than is available on the surface web (sites indexable by search engines) reside behind deep web - password protected databases, non-indexed web pages or query-only databases. I will admit, I'm really a beginner at the deep web, but have begun my journey. I want to share with you some of the deep web information and resolutions of mine since I've begun my own intentional exploration of the deep web: The 21st Century Information Fluency Project has some gre...

I'm excited about tonight's Wow2 show that starts in about 30 minutes (9 pm EST) with Dr. Mary Friend Shepherd - Professor and Program Director for the PhD Educational Technology Program at Walden and Dr. Robert McLaughlin, Chair, ISTE SIG on Digital Equity ; Chair, ISTE SIG on Innovative Learning Technologies and Executive Director, National Institute for Community Innovations. It is going to be a great conversation. Here are the planned talking points: Wow's - Jennifer, Sharon, Cheryl, Vicki Introduction Research 2.0 Discussion - Talk about any current research that you are aware of that is important for those who are looking at Web 2.0 to understand. The Evolution of the PhD Program -- Why does it need to evolve? If so, how? Meaningful, Connected Research - How can we connect the research of PhD students to that of relevant classroom needs. If you could create your ideal PhD program, what would it be? Time Permitting How can we involve researchers, who typically don...