February 8th, 2010
Sounds cool! From the Learning Games Network:
As part of our Learning Games webinar series, we invite you to join us this Wednesday, Feb 10, 2010 for Olympics Science: Online Resources for the Classroom from NBC Learn.
Description: On February 12th, the torch will light over Vancouver for the 2010 Winter Olympic Games. Join the Learning Games Network’s Alex Chisholm and special guest Norman Cohen, producer at NBC Learn, to bring the science of the Winter Olympics home to your classroom.
NBC Learn has collaborated with the National Science Foundation to create this series of video resources and lesson plans demonstrating the links between the laws of physics and the principles of chemistry, and downhill skiing, bobsledding, and other sports.
We hope you’ll join us this Wednesday, Feb 10, at 7:30pm EST to learn more about how NBC Learn can inspire students by approaching the science of sports from a new perspective.
Links:
NBC Learn: http://nbclearn.com/olympics
Lesson Plans: http://lessonopoly.org/svef/?q=node/9086
Tags: chemistry, Learning Games Network, lesson plans, lessons, NBC Learn, NSF, Olympics, physics, Science, sports, video
Posted in In the news, cool links, fun/free stuff | No Comments »
February 8th, 2010
In less than 2 months I’ll be going “down under” and keynoting the Australian Computers in Education Conference ACEC2010 in Melbourne Australia.
When: 6 – 9 April 2010
Where: Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre
Full details online: www.acec2010.info
I’m excited about this and will write more soon about my keynote topic, but first, some fun stuff!
From ACEC2010:
The ACEC2010: Digital Diversity conference opens in just 58 days. There’s a lot going on in the ICTEV office as we get ready to put on the biggest ICT event for educators in Australia this year. The program is now online – check http://acec2010.info/program-glance for an overview. Soon we’ll be inviting registered attendees to come back to the website, login and choose their sessions for the conference.
We’ve also got a couple of competitions coming up. Next month we’ll be running the Inaugural ACCE Australasian Educational Media Awards, proudly sponsored by Edsoft. At this ACEC2010 we’d like to acknowledge the contribution of Australasian educators who support the learning community through blogs, wikis, podcasts and other new media forums. Keep tuned for more information.
But first up is the ACEC2010 T-shirt Design Competition to select artwork for the official conference t-shirt.
This is an opportunity to get your students involved and showcase their design talent or even have a go yourself. The winning design will go on the front of the official ACEC2010 conference t-shirt. Enter now to Feb 21, 2010.
Go for it!
Sylvia
Tags: ACCE, ACEC, ACEC2010, australia, Australian Computers in Education Conference, keynote, Melbourne, sylvia martinez
Posted in conferences, contests | No Comments »
February 4th, 2010
The Constructivist Consortium in partnership with SIGTELE is bringing the popular Constructivist Celebration to Michigan! Plan to join in this MACUL pre-conference learning experience on Wednesday, March 10, 2010 in Grand Rapids. Participants will receive the day’s educational program, a hearty lunch and free software from Constructivist Consortium members, including five free tools from Tech4Learning: Pixie, Frames, WebBlender, Twist, and ImageBlender.
This hugely popular workshop, also offered as a pre-conference event at the National Education Computing Conference (NECC/ISTE) sells out quickly each year. Don’t miss your chance to learn with the best at this full-day, hands-on workshop led by Constructivist Consortium co-directors Melinda Kolk and Gary Stager.
More information and registration here.
If you aren’t convinced, read this article (PDF) by Mary Saffron,
SIG TeleLearning Communications Officer about her experience at the NECC Constructivist Celebration in the latest MACUL Journal.
If you are in the Grand Rapids area or are attending MACUL, be sure to add this event to your conference registration!
Sylvia
Tags: constructivist, Constructivist Consortium, gary stager, MACUL, MACUL10, Melinda Kolk, SIGTELE, Tech4Learning
Posted in conferences, constructivism, professional development | No Comments »
February 3rd, 2010
Google is kicking off the third annual Doodle 4 Google competition. Doodle 4 Google is a competition open to K-12 students in U.S. schools who are invited to create their own Google doodle inspired by the theme, “If I Could Do Anything, I Would . . .” A “doodle” is the logo design that appears on the Google homepage periodically to celebrate special events, holidays, or the lives of artists and inventors.
There are a lot of great prizes, including a new “Extra Credit: Technology Booster” award in the form of netbook computers for schools that submit the maximum number of doodles by March 10, 2010 and have students that are selected to be a 400 State Finalist.
Schools must register to participate by March 17, 2010 and the entries are due March 31, 2010.
Doodle 4 Google competition rules, prizes, and details are here.
Sylvia
Tags: competition, contest, doodle 4 google, doodle4google, prize, student
Posted in contests | No Comments »
February 2nd, 2010
“Even as I write this, I am amazed at how much kids did in just 20 minutes. I can’t wait to see where they go next and what they do when I introduce ideas such as storyboarding, clay animation, etc. It will be interesting to hear their conversations about the things they notice outside of school–times when photos are manipulated, etc I didn’t realize how much they would learn from this one tool.”
via A Year of Reading: Discovering the Possibilities of Stopmotion in Grades 2-5.
People ask me all the time – so what does project-based learning look like? This blog post is a great example of a teacher explaining just that. It’s the details that stand out – the choice of a good tool, the thoughtfulness of finding the right balance between too much or too little initial instruction, and the reflection on what happened.
People think that project-based learning is more difficult for the teacher, but this article points out that the teacher used the same tool and same lesson plan for grades 2-5. The projects were age-appropriate and varied because students brought their own experiences to their projects, not because the teacher designed the lesson differently.
I often ask teachers to share in sessions what happens in their classrooms when they allow these experiences to unfold. These stories share a sense of wonderment at what students are capable of when given the chance. Yet it’s hard to explain exactly how this happens or what the teacher does besides “let go.” To many people, project-based learning seems like an “if you build it, they will come” kind of mystical promise.
Articles like this explode some of that mythology. It’s clear that the teacher is actively guiding students in their natural pursuit of learning. And it’s clear that for technology based projects, open-ended tools like Frames allow students to not only succeed quickly, but support longer and deeper experiences as students gain fluency.
Please read Discovering the Possibilities of Stopmotion in Grades 2-5!
Sylvia
Tags: animation, educational technology, elementary, Frames, PBL, project-based, software, stop-motion, student
Posted in professional development, student project samples | 1 Comment »
February 2nd, 2010
The Capitol Region ISTE affiliate (CRSTE) is hosting a free online conference on education and technology called C3 – CRSTE Cyber Conference 2010 every evening from Feb 21 – March 5, 2010 . You don’t have to be from the mid-Atlantic region (Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Virginia, DC, West Virginia, North Carolina, Maryland, and Delaware) to participate in this conference, and you don’t even have to show up!
The conference is a combination of asynchronous and synchronous events, and everything will be archived so you can check back in at any time. I was honored to be asked to participate and I’ll be presenting a session live.
Student Leadership ‐ Building Authentic 21st Century Skills
Date: February 27, 2010 Saturday
Time: 5:00 PM EST
Session Description: This session will present 4 models of student leadership focused on improving technology integration in real schools around the world. Having tech-savvy students help solve the authentic problems of 21st century education builds future leaders, learners, and citizens.
You can download the conference schedule here (PDF)
To register for the conference, you simply check off the sessions you are interested in. Online conferences are great ways to participate without a huge committment of time or money! And yes, although the sessions will be permanently archived, it’s more fun to be in the “action” online. You’ll be able to chat and interact as the session goes on.
Hope you’ll stop by!
Sylvia
Tags: conference, CRSTE, educational technology, free, ISTE, online, student leadership, student voice
Posted in conferences, fun/free stuff, professional development | No Comments »
February 1st, 2010
Education Week: Teaching Girls to Tinker.
Yet, even as girls open new gender gaps by outpacing their male peers in most subjects, men still receive roughly 77 percent of the bachelor’s degrees awarded in engineering and 85 percent of those in computer science. Why aren’t girls choosing to enter these critical fields of the future?
There are several familiar explanations: Girls lack sufficient female role models in computer science and engineering; girls prefer sciences that are clearly connected to helping others; girls are turned off by the “isolated geek” stereotype that dominates their view of computer science and engineering.
Here’s another explanation: Girls don’t tinker.
Be sure to read the rest of the article…Teaching Girls to Tinker
My Tinkering Towards Technology Fluency session at Educon 2.2 went very well. I’m waiting to hear if the recording glitches were solved or if it’s lost to eternity! (Don’t bother clicking on the Elluminate link on the session page, it just says the session is over.) I have heard, though, that they are working on putting up the links.
It was a great conversation. So many people participated and shared some really great ideas and stories. I will post some resources from the conversation soon.
Sylvia
Tags: engineering, gender, girls, STEM, tinker, tinkering
Posted in Generation YES | 2 Comments »
January 28th, 2010
I typically don’t post all the emails I get asking for placement on this blog. I guess I should be happy that people think it’s worth their time! But this one seems like it should be the exception. Here it is in whole.
Hey Sylvia,
This is Maria Tchijov, Director of Outreach at Change.org. I wanted to let you all know that we recently officially launched the second annual ‘Ideas for Change in America’ competition today, and I wanted to see if you’d be interested in posting an idea of your own. (You can see the site at www.change.org/ideas.)
As you might recall, the first Ideas for Change in America competition was launched following the presidential election, inspiring the submission of more than 7,500 ideas and 650,000 votes. The purpose of the initiative this year is to empower citizens to identify and build momentum behind the country’s best ideas for addressing the major challenges we face.
We’re currently accepting ideas in 20 issue categories, and are looking for a few top bloggers in each area to post an idea that we can feature. To participate, all we’d need you to do is post an idea of a few hundred words or less describing a policy or program you’d like to see implemented. You can see the simple submission page here: http://www.change.org/ideas/post_idea.
Voting is open to the public, and we’ll be hosting a large event in DC to announce the 10 winners of the competition in March. Most importantly, in the months following the conclusion of voting we’ll be mobilizing the growing Change.org team and our 1 million community members to heavily promote each winning idea and the people and organizations behind them.
If you have any questions at all, please let me know. And if this isn’t something you have the time to participate in but think your readers might be interested, it would be awesome if you might mention it on your blog.
Thanks for the support!
Maria
Tags: America, change, change.org, competition, contest
Posted in Generation YES | No Comments »
January 27th, 2010
How deep are video games? « Computing Education Blog.
Interesting post by Mark Guzdial and comments discussing some of the hype about how video games are “the new liberal arts.”
Games are “the new liberal arts”? Games as the “folk music of the 1960s”? My experience with games don’t go that deep. I find if I think about them too hard, there’s nothing there but the assumptions and world-view of the game author. A great example of the bottom not being too deep is the SimCity game player who famously told Sherry Turkle in The Second Self, “If you raise taxes, people riot.” Can games really be as deep as great literature, or great music? I suppose it’s possible, but I haven’t seen it yet.
Sylvia
Tags: education, learning, liberal arts, video game
Posted in Generation YES | 4 Comments »
January 26th, 2010
Citing studies that show a marked decline in the number of students pursuing education in math, science and engineering, the Pentagon’s Defense Advance Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is requesting proposals for “innovative new ideas to encourage students to major in CS-STEM and pursue careers as engineers and scientists.”
DARPA was the agency that funded the research that created what we now know as the Internet. It’s great that they are again looking to fund this kind of educational goals.
What kinds of projects do you think they should fund? Please comment!
via DARPA Promotes High-Tech Education.
Tags: DARPA, internet, research, STEM
Posted in In the news, funding | No Comments »
