Generation YES Blog

Perhaps the best commentary ever on how slideshow presentations all start to sound alike after a while:

“It’s a simple idea: Inspire Action. Change the world. Have Fun. Because doing good shouldn’t feel like a chore.”

Alldaybuffet.org is a site created to connect people with causes that matter.

Enjoy.

Sylvia

We’re pleased to announce the winners of our first “Go Green” contest. Generation YES students were asked to create a video showcasing their school’s efforts to help the environment.

Our two grand prize winners are:

• Winston Churchill Middle School near Sacramento, California
• Heim Middle School in Williamsville, New York

See both videos here!

Bonus - just got word of another Green contest:
Do Something is inviting America’s middle and high schools to reduce their carbon footprint this fall through the “Increase Your Green” competition. All initiatives must be youth-designed and -led. The competition opens October 13 and closes December 8. Visit the Do Something Web site for complete program guidelines and application procedures.

Sylvia

The National Educational Computing Conference (NECC) will be in San Antonio, Texas in less than two weeks, June 28 - July 3, 2008. Sponsored by ISTE, this is the “big” national conference of the year for technology in education.

Every year, we plan our booth with a fun theme (fun = cheap!) and this year our theme is “Go Green.” We ran a contest for our schools to share student-made videos about their school’s green efforts, we have a new booth that’s lighter (takes less energy to ship,) and we’ll be doing what we can to reuse and recycle!

Generation YES will be in booth 7148 in the exhibit hall, with GenYES teachers and students from Texas and Kansas on hand. We will also be participating in several events and panels. Be sure to stop by and say “HOWDY!”

FREE STUFF! We will be handing out samples of our new TechYES Science Student Guide. (I talked a bit about this new product and our STEM initiatives in a previous post.) TechYES Science guides students to a technology literacy certification through science projects. Come by and get one!

Events (link to NECC schedule)
Bridging the Digital Divide in Texas
Dennis Harper, with Trina Davis, Susanna Garza and Martha Peet
Monday, 6/30/2008, 12:30pm-1:30pm

Student-Centered Laptop Integration into the Classroom
Ron Canuel, Eastern Townships School Board (Canada) with Susan Einhorn, Sylvia Martinez, Scott Parker and Gary Stager
Monday, 6/30/2008, 2:00pm-3:00pm

Assessing Student Technology Literacy
Agnes Zaorski, Eatontown Public Schools with Cathy Higgins, Ashanti Jefferson and Sylvia Martinez
Tuesday, 7/1/2008, 3:30pm-4:30pm

Transforming Technology Projects from Good to Great
Melinda Kolk, Tech4Learning, Inc. with Sylvia Martinez, Peter Reynolds, Adam Smith and Gary Stager
Wednesday, 7/2/2008, 12:00pm-1:00pm

Constructivist Celebration - Sunday, June 28. Join colleagues in a day-long celebration of creativity, computing & constructivist learning. Sponsored by the Constructivist Consortium. (Sorry, this event is sold out!)

I’ll also be at the EdubloggerCon pre-NECC event on Saturday. This should be a fun, informal event and a perfect (free!) way to meet virtual friends and like-minded educators. It’s not just for bloggers, by the way, it’s for all tech-loving educators interested in new applications, online projects, collaboration, and Web 2.0. Hope to see Twitter-friends and Classroom 2.0′rs there!

Sylvia

The Solutions to the Dropout Crisis  series is available on the 4th Tuesday of every month at 3:30 PM Eastern Time. This is a live call-in show featuring international experts and authors in drop-out prevention. Click here to access the website, archives, and many supplementary resources.

This program is a public service of Clemson University. There is no fee, and no registration is required. You may listen to the program and view the supplementary materials using only your computer, either live or afterwards. You will need to call in if you wish to speak on the live program.

Tune in for the next show - Keeping Youth In School - How Service-Learning Can Help!
June 24, 2008 3:30PM ET

Archives

• The Role of the Principal in Dropout Prevention
• Policies and Practices Related to Student Failure and Dropping Out: Tools and Resources
• From At-Risk to Academic Excellence: What Successful Leaders Do
• Addressing Bullying in Schools: An Introduction to the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program

Sylvia

There are some great student-created videos among the all the winners of C-SPAN Classroom’s StudentCam video documentary competition!

C-SPAN StudentCam video documentary winners

The contest was sponsored by C-SPAN Classroom. The site offers downloadable and searchable civics and history video clips, with a feature that allows educators to rate, comment and share them, plus other classroom friendly content. Free registration.

It’s slightly annoying that the videos are in Real Player format…

BUT… there are some really great resources here, especially for the current US presidential campaign. View Campaign 2008 Clips.

Sylvia

This just in from Google - Google Docs will have an offline mode very soon. The rollout of all the features is happening over the next few weeks, but soon it will mean that you can edit your Google docs when you do not have an Internet connection. This is a long awaited feature for many users!

To keep up with all the new Google Docs offerings, be sure to subscribe to the Google Docs blog and the new Google Channel on YouTube. There are many videos from Google explaining features of the various Google tools, but also videos uploaded by users (including many teachers).

Here’s how Google Docs offline works:

Sylvia

Kern Kelley’s students in Maine have created a web-enabled comic book style help guide for the Google Doc applications they are using. Kern blogs at The Tech Curve, and I’ve written about Kern and his students before, they are very involved in student-centered ways to use technology.

Direct link to: Overview of the Google Online Applications

This is a terrific project for students, and useful for a school! Since you create it yourself, students can add customized details about your server and network, remind readers about the Acceptable Use Policies, and make suggestions for using these tools.

I’ve blogged about student-created video help guides before, and all the reasons that these are terrific projects for students. These comic-book creations are another idea to accomplish the same goals!

The online PDF viewer is called Issuu (pronounce “issue”). It’s a new, free Web 2.0 application. You upload a PDF and it converts it to a very slick looking viewer. There are tools to share these through email or embed them in a blog, Facebook site, or other ways. It’s new, so take care in its use with students. The user agreement does say you have to be 18 to upload. I didn’t see anything “bad” in the PDFs that are shared on the home page, but you never know.

Sylvia

It’s meme time again! Memes are the Web 2.0 version of a chain letter, an idea passed from one person to another to create variations on a central theme.

This one is called the Passion Quilt Meme and I’ve been tagged by Barbara Bray. The directions are to find an image that reflects what you are most passionate for kids to learn about. That’s a pretty tall order!

Browsing through Flickr I found an image that spoke to me and added a poster frame.

Because in reality, there is not any one thing that I think kids should learn “about.”

To me, learning is not about things or facts or tools. It is about a child building an image of themselves that has power. If that is instilled in youth, there is no limit to what they can decide to learn about.

I just hope that every child in the world can think of themselves as learners. I hope they have the opportunity to find their passion. I want them to be welcomed as valuable participants in society. I want them to care and be cared for. I hope that they can envision a future where they are in charge of their own lives.

Directions: Find or create an image that captures what you are most passionate for kids to learn about.

• Post a picture from a source like Flickr Creative Commons or make/take your own that captures what YOU are most passionate about for kids to learn…and give your picture a short title.
• Title your blog post “Meme: Passion Quilt” and link back to this blog entry.
• Include links to 5 folks in your professional learning network or whom you follow on Twitter/Pownce.

Tagging people from my Flickr/Twitter/Facebook network:

• Brian C. Smith
• Lucy Gray
• Adam Fletcher
• Arthus
• Bonnie Bracey

Sylvia

Just announced from Google Docs - a new Survey feature for their shareable Spreadsheets application. This feature allows you to create surveys that live on a website, and the data is collected into a Google spreadsheet.

Create a form in a Google Docs spreadsheet and send it out to anyone with an email address. They won’t need to sign in, and they can respond directly from the email message or from an automatically generated web page. Creating the form is easy: start with a spreadsheet to get the form, or start by creating the form and you’ll get the spreadsheet automatically. (Google blog)

The possibilities for educational uses are endless. You can collect data for math projects, signups, opinions, or anything. All without asking people to sign up for a gmail account or asking them to share the spreadsheet and figure out how to input data. It’s even easier than a wiki, if that’s possible!

Darren Draper does a nice survey of the features with a sample survey and spreadsheet open to everyone. Be sure to check it out!