Today's Interesting Links

Links for [del.icio.us]

• Special Olympics: Soeren Palumbo
  Soeren Palumbo's courage to say what he believed in front of his entire school was inspired by the love between a brother and sister.
• Online University Reviews : 100 Most Inspiring and Innovative Blogs for Educators
  Being a teacher is a difficult and often thankless job. Between lesson plans, unengaged students, and new emerging technologies, teachers need help now more than ever. By visiting the 100 blogs below, they will find answers to all their questions, as well as valuable teaching resources.
• The Power of Project Learning | Scholastic.com
  Project-based learning can be traced back to John Dewey and it has come and gone since the early 20th century. As a pedagogical method, it often meets resistance since it doesn't fit the skill-and-drill model that typically dominates education. But today, it is enjoying a comeback as cutting-edge schools demonstrate just how effectively it imparts the skills students need in today's workforce.
• 6 Ways to Publish Your Own Book
  Online self-publishing services have given users the tools they need to create, publish and promote their work. These sites allow authors to bypass the process of finding an agent and pitching to publishing houses, a venture that can take months, if not years. Here are six great sites that will help you publish your work, guaranteeing you a published book that can be sold via different outlets, such as Amazon.
• The Edurati Review: A Missing Piece of the Professional Development Puzzle
  We often approach professional development without all the pieces in place. We schedule a training event rather than strategizing how to support the changes we want to see in our classrooms. As a result, the training becomes a memory rather than a springboard. A good coach can carry the professional growth from the training event into the classrooms. With coaching, a great training event becomes a launching pad for greater instructional excellence. Why? What does a coach do that aids professional growth?
• Bedford Bits » Blog Archive » Ten Ways to Use Twitter with Colleagues
  In my last post, I shared Ten How-To Resources that explain how to use Twitter, and if that's not enough, here are thirty more Twitter tutorials. There's no end to the number of Web pages that explain the technical how-tos of using Twitter. You'll also find quite a few sites that explain how companies are using Twitter for marketing, customer support, and more. But how are language arts and college English teachers using Twitter?
• Photosynth
  Photosynth creates an amazing new experience with nothing more than a bunch of photos. Creating a synth allows you to share the places and things you love using the cinematic quality of a movie, the control of a video game, and the mind-blowing detail of the real world.
• ISTE Classroom Observation Tool
  The ISTE Classroom Observation Tool (ICOT®) is a FREE online tool that provides a set of questions to guide classroom observations of a number of key components of technology integration.
• Skype Other Classrooms! | The Edublogger
  This page has been set up to help you make connections with classes in other countries who are interesting in having Skype conversations with other classes. You can contact each person by clicking on their name.
• TECSIG TV on USTREAM: Live from the TECSIG meeting in Austin Texas. TecSig is the Technology Directors Special Interest Group of the Texas Computer Education
  Will Richardson talks about making connections through RSS feeds. Live from the TECSIG meeting in Austin Texas. TecSig is the Technology Directors Special Interest Group of the Texas Computer Education Association.
• tecsigmay2009 / FrontPage
  Will Richardson's presentation on RSS feeds.

Today's Interesting Links

Teaching Internet Safety [del.icio.us]

• i-SAFE Inc.
  i-SAFE Inc. is the worldwide leader in Internet safety education. Founded in 1998 and endorsed by the U.S. Congress, i-SAFE is a non-profit foundation dedicated to protecting the online experiences of youth everywhere. i-SAFE incorporates classroom curriculum with dynamic community outreach to empower students, teachers, parents, law enforcement, and concerned adults to make the Internet a safer place. Please join us today in the fight to safeguard our children's online experience.
• CyberSmart! Student Curriculum
  Free to educators, the CyberSmart! Student Curriculum empowers students to use the Internet safely, responsibly, and effectively.
• NetSmartz.org
  A wealth of resources to help students learn to use Web 2.0 tools safely.
• Internet Safety CFF/MVSD / FrontPage
  The Classrooms for the Future initiative at Moshannon Valley High School recognizes the hazards to your children posed by the Internet. Though your children may seem wise to the ways of the Web, they still need to be guided and monitored by you, their parents. In order to help you fulfill this crucial responsibility, CFF/MV is providing this resource of information concerning child safety on the Internet. The Web is a world of information, communication, and entertainment beyond belief, but like any powerful entity, it needs to be handled wisely and safely.
• Real Life Stories - "Cyberbullying: You Can't Take it Back"
  A teen regrets his participation on a web site created to rate others at his school.
• internetsafety - Michelle Krill on Diigo
  Michelle Krill has put together a great list of resources on internet safety and cyber bullying.
• Pew Internet & American Life Project
  This presentation pulls together Pew Internet Project research about teenagers' online activities, their behavior on social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace, and their Web 2.0 content creation activities. It covers the threats posed by cyberbullying, and stranger contact on the internet. and suggests that a new kind of competence we call "self literacy" is useful in the digital age.
• YouTube - Childnet International - Cyber Bullying
  This video illustrates the dangers of cyber bullying and offers solutions to the problem.
• YouTube - Merciless {Gay Slurs} Bullying Leads to Child's Suicide
  CNN's Anderson Cooper Reports: On April 6, 2007 - Sirdeaner Walker came home, walked up the stairs to the second floor of her home, and saw her son suspended from a support beam in the stairwell, swaying slightly in the air, an extension cord wrapped around his neck, according to police. He apologized in a suicide note, told his mother that he loved her, and left his video games to his brother. Walker said her son had been the victim of bullying since the beginning of the school year, and that she had been calling the school since September, complaining that her son was mercilessly teased. He played football, baseball, and was a boy scout, but a group of classmates called him gay and teased him about the way he dressed.

A Vision of Digital Literacy

I spent some time last week walking the halls, finding teachers and staff to talk with about digital literacy. I’ve been wondering about how students learn the soft skills of working with Web 2.0. I’m not talking about how to use this application or that piece of software. Instead, I wonder about where, when, and how students are learning better internet research skills, safety when creating internet profiles, issues involving cyber-bullying, and internet etiquette, to name just a few topics. Unfortunately, teachers are overwhelmed and isolated, two pressures working against promoting a vision of digital literacy in our schools.

It can be the trap of the traditional high school. High school teachers get engrossed in content. As a high school English teacher, I know. I love what I teach. If you start talking with me about non-western memoirs and their value in the secondary literature classroom, I will go on and on. We sometimes get trapped in the mindset of needing to cover the curriculum, of “getting it all in.” With so many demands on our curriculum, with so much more to “cover,” digital literacy can feel like just one more thing to teach. Just one more thing to cover.

Added to this pressure, a number of teachers I spoke with expressed feelings of isolation. We are working with the doors of our classroom closed, and we are working hard. Many teachers are not just finding critical and creative ways to teach their content, but they are also finding ways to integrate and teach digital literacy skills. I’ve been in classrooms with teachers using wiki pages to encourage student collaboration. I’ve seen students excitedly respond to a text using a Ning. Teachers are using so many Web 2.0 tools to engage and collaborate with their students. Unfortunately, many of our high school teachers are not working together. We are not sharing our success with others in our building. As a result, the lessons on digital literacy are not consistent. Teachers are creating lessons using this or that application but with no vision of what we are teaching and why.

With technology exponentially changing the educational landscape, teachers and administrators have had a difficult time keeping up. "Integrating technology throughout a school system is, in itself, significant systemic reform. We have a wealth of evidence attesting to the importance of leadership in implementing and sustaining systemic reform in schools. It is critical, therefore, that we attend seriously to leadership for technology in schools, " writes Don Knezek of the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE). Unfortunately, many of us get caught up in learning about this or that application that we forget to reflect on the skills that are being developed. And the skills are what we should be focused on. The skills are transferrable from one application to the next. Ultimately, applications will come and go, but digital literacy skills, like traditional literacy skills, should remain relevant beyond a particular web page. We need to find ways to build a cohesive vision of what, why, and how we teach our students 21st century digital literacy skills.

1) What is our vision?
Schools need to establish a vision for how, when, and who teaches digital literacy to their particular students. What are the skills our students should leave our school knowing? We need to establish a vision for what it is that we need our 21st century students to know, understand, and do when it comes to digital literacy. When do we teach students about internet safety? Who teaches students effective research skills? How do we teach copyright issues? Having a document that sequentially lays out these digital skills gives our whole community a shared vision. It should be a vision that students, teachers, and administrators develop together.

2) How do we share our vision with teachers?
What sorts of professional development opportunities do we offer to teachers? What are the models for engaging teachers in learning and sharing digital literacy skills? Professional development is an integral component of sharing our digital literacy vision. It is something that teachers must help to develop, build, and present in order for there to be buy-in.

3) How do we share our vision with students?
Do we create required digital literacy classes? Do we find ways to use our homeroom/advisory programs to help teach students digital literacy skills? Do we make sure particular skills/issues are embedded in particular courses? Do core courses have final projects that address particular digital literacy skills? How are other schools are teaching digital literacy? What are the models for educating students on issues of internet safety and appropriateness, effective research skills, copyright concerns, among other skills.

How does your school teach digital literacy?

Today's Interesting Links

Links [del.icio.us]

• XHTML live chat based on the XMLHttpRequest Object
  This chat tool has been refined for purposes of collaborative and conversational learning. You are here not only to learn, but to share and teach. Each participant is asked to pose questions, comments, and additional ideas and resources. The transcript of this chat canl be transferred into a wiki page where participants and presenter will be able to continue the conversation by inserting additional content -- growing a document of learning and exploration. Knitter is an experiment in the use of backchanneling in instructional settings. It was developed by David Warlick, using opensource code created by Alexander Kohihofer. Knitter may be released in the future of a limited number of educators. Please stay tuned here and David Warlick's blog, 2¢ Worth.
• Best Embeds for Educational Wikis and Blogs | Making Teachers Nerdy
  Now that you and/or your students are using wikis and blogs, are you curious what could be added to them? From animated slideshows to collaborative documents to interactive review games, many great (and free) tools are available. As a follow up to my previous post "What Teachers Should and Should Not Be Posting on their Classroom Webpages", I've pulled a master list of embedding options that will hopefully spark your imagination.
• eduwikius - home
  Welcome to the Eduwiki.us Project - Dedicated to Building a Better Learning Community A wealthy of resources with subject specific wiki pages full of ideas and lesson plans.
• Education - Change.org: How to Write Timed Essays That aren't Crap
  Nowhere does it exist except in classrooms, AP exams, and SATs. Most horribly, students get the idea that this mechanical form is good essay writing generally, even for take-home papers. To me, it's the job of the high school teacher to unteach the mechanical form, and grow students into the organic approach.
• Training Resources & Links - Twitter for Teachers
  A collaborate effort to teach teachers about Twitter
• FACEBOOK FAIL: How to Use Facebook Privacy Settings and Avoid Disaster
  The beauty of Facebook's many features is that now you can choose what you show and to what type of people. By using friend lists and playing with your privacy settings, you can create different views for each segment of your life.
• Powerful Learning Practice, LLC
  Powerful Learning Practice offers a unique opportunity for educators to participate in a long-term, job-embedded professional development program that immerses them in 21st Century learning environments. The PLP model is currently enabling hundreds of educators around the country to experience the transformative potential of social Web tools to build global learning communities and re-envision their own personal learning practice.
• Cool Cat Teacher Blog: 122 For You: Cool Cat Teacher's Favorite Apps, Software, and Sites
  A wonderful collection of applications and sites organized by type and annotated.
• Personal Learning Networks Adoption Within Schools: Impact on Learning & Challenges Faced
  Personal Learning Networks (PLNs) when used effectively extend our learning, increases our reflection while enabling us to learn together as part of a global community. Unfortunately it's hard to make people new to social networking appreciate the importance of developing a PLN because they need to experience its impact themselves. This is a wonderful archived session.

Today's Interesting Links

Links for 2009-04-22 [del.icio.us]

• Holocaust Remembrance Project Teacher Resource Guide
  Holocaust Remembrance Project's Teacher Resource Guide is a powerful tool in sharing the Holocaust with your high school students. The Holland & Knight Charitable Foundation is pleased to provide this Teacher Resource Guide and hopes you will use the Guide to further share the Holocaust, and it's significance to us today, with your students.
• Education | For Educators
  For Teachers: Teaching about the Holocaust The Museum has many resources for teachers striving to help students learn the history of the Holocaust and reflect upon the moral and ethical questions raised by that history.
• The Edurati Review: It's Not about the Technology
  I am sitting here at my laptop, occasionally watching my Skype and Tweetdeck notifications in case I miss something from a family member or colleague, and I'm going to honestly tell you that learning in the 21st century is not about the technology. Blasphemy! my tech-savvy friends are saying. Six months ago I might have agreed, but today I'm more than willing to stand by my words.
• http://www.GoogleLitTrips.com
  You'll find a Google Lit Trip for Kite Runner and a Holocaust studies unit on this site.
• Holocaust Education Resources for Teachers
  This Holocaust Teacher Resource Center (TRC) web site, is dedicated to the memory of the six million Jewish people slaughtered during the Holocaust and the millions other people slaughtered during the Nazi era. It strives to combat prejudice and bigotry by transforming the horrors of the Holocaust into positive lessons to help make this a better and safer world for everybody. This site is sponsored by the Holocaust Education Foundation, Inc.
• Guidelines for Teaching about the Holocaust
  The Holocaust provides one of the most effective subjects for an examination of basic moral issues. A structured inquiry into this history yields critical lessons for an investigation of human behavior. Study of the event also addresses one of the central mandates of education in the United States, which is to examine what it means to be a responsible citizen.
• ReadWriteThink: Lesson Plan: Using Technology to Analyze and Illustrate Symbolism in <i>Night</i>
  Literacy learning is no longer limited to books; to be truly literate, students need to investigate and use technology in the classroom. This lesson for middle and high school students explores the use of symbolism in Elie Wiesel's autobiographical novel Night. After learning about symbolism and discussing its use in the book, students create visual representations using ReadWriteThink.org's Literary Graffiti tool. Students then express their response to the symbolism in the book by creating a photomontage using images from multiple websites about the Holocaust and text from survivor stories, articles about hate crimes, and Night.
• SCORE: Teacher Guide--Night by Elie Weisel
  This supplemental unit to Night by Elie Wiesel was developed by teachers in the Schools of California Online Resources for Educators (SCORE) Project, funded by the California Technology Assistance Program (CTAP) and the California County Superintendents Educational Services Association (CCSESA)
• Elie Wiesel: First Person Singular . Teaching Guide | PBS
  The film Elie Wiesel: First Person Singular is about one man's passionate resolve to bear witness for the millions of people who suffered and perished in the Holocaust. He has been sustained by his faith and guided by his belief in the power of language and the value of teaching.
• Elie Wiesel @Web English Teacher
  A wonderful collection of resources for teaching Elie Wiesel's memoir Night.
• K-3 Teachers Guide to Twitter
  I have been itching to write this Teachers Guide to Twitter for a while now - hoping to encourage K-3 Teachers and others, to give Twitter a try. Many of our visitors have expressed that it is all too confusing - so - I will do my best to unravel the 'mystery' behind Twitter - it is worth it...so hang in there with me...
• onepage : Tim’s Blog
  On this page you will find all (currently 21) of the one page guides - including a new Blogging with Wordpress introduction and a guide to registering a domain name created as part of a series I'm working on for local campaigning organisations.
• World Digital Library Home
  The World Digital Library will make available on the Internet, free of charge and in multilingual format, significant primary materials from cultures around the world, including manuscripts, maps, rare books, musical scores, recordings, films, prints, photographs, architectural drawings, and other significant cultural materials. The objectives of the World Digital Library are to promote international and inter-cultural understanding and awareness, provide resources to educators, expand non-English and non-Western content on the Internet, and to contribute to scholarly research.

Today's Interesting Links

WNY Education Associates » Blogging with students: A good resource for teachers interested in beginning classroom blogging. This post features valuable bookmarked resources for those who are interested in using blogs with students Alfie Kohn: When “21st-Century Schooling” Just Isn’t Good Enough: A Modest Proposal - Teachers.Net Gazette This need to be number one also explains why we can no longer settle for teaching to the "whole child." The trouble is that if you have a whole of something, you have only one of it. CFF English Collaboration Day Keynote, Ustream.TV: Renee Hobbs. Travel&Nature,Webcam,Education,Election,News,Politics Renee Hobb's presents on teaching media literacy at Delaware County's Classrooms for the Future English Collaboration Day. Renee Hobbs Delco CFF Fair Use Presentation, Ustream.TV: Fair Use Presentation. Education What is the Doctrine of Fair Use and Transformativeness? Check out this follow-up to Renee Hobb's keynote address at DCIU's CFF English Collaboration Day Copyright And Fair Use Intended for Educators and Students. Edited version of a presentation given at the NICE (Northern Illinois Computing Educators) Conference in February, 2009

Bring on the Ning!

As many educational technology writers like David Warlick, Will Richardson, and others have pointed out, when students write for an authentic audience they not only grow as writers but as thinkers as well. In his book Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms, Will Richardson explains how the collaborative nature of Web 2.0 encourages students to "read more critically, think about that reading more analytically, and write more clearly. And, they are building relationships with peers, teachers, mentors, and professionals..." (21). In publishing their writing to the web through platforms like Nings, students "become active participants in the design of their own learning, we teach them how to be active participants in their lives and future careers" (129).

Joyce Valenza, a library information specialist and writer, expands on the advantages of using the Read/Write Web with students, specifically the advantages of using Nings. On her wiki page, Top Ten Reasons for Using 2.0 in Learning, Valenza suggests that Nings:

• open up opportunities for students to write for larger, authentic audiences


• create class environments for interaction and media sharing


• promote, support, and model creative and innovative thinking and inventiveness(NETS*T)


• engage students in exploring real-world issues and solving authentic problems using digital tools and resources (NETS*T)


• promote student reflection using collaborative tools to reveal and clarify students' conceptual understanding and thinking, planning, and creative processes (NETS*T)


• allow teachers to customize and personalize learning activities to address students' diverse learning styles, working strategies, and abilities using digital tools and resources (NETS*T)


• promote collaboration with students, peers, parents, and community members using digital tools and resources to support student success and innovation (NETS*T)


• advocate, model, and teach safe, legal, and ethical use of digital information and technology, including respect for copyright, intellectual property, and the appropriate documentation of sources (NETS*T)


• promote and model digital etiquette and responsible social interactions related to the use of technology and information (NETS*T)

But what the heck is a Ning?
According to their website, a Ning is a social network that "...empowers people to create and discover new social experiences for the most important people and interests in their lives. Ning was started with a simple premise: when people have the freedom to create a new social experience online, uniquely customized for the most important people and interests in their lives with no effort, no cost, and infinite choice, the world is a better, more colorful and certainly more interesting place in which to live."

What can teachers do with a Ning?

• Create a discussion board where students can respond to your questions and to each other


• Post assignments or link handouts


• Enable each student to create a blog


• Encourage students to respond to one another's posts or blogs


• Link files, images, audio, and video files

Check out what these teachers are doing with Nings:

• I created this Ning for my 10th grade students, but am also using it to help introduce other teachers to using Nings - msward.ning.com


• Mr. Siegerman and Ms. Ward created this Ning to connect upper and underclass students - alookahead.ning.com


• Mrs. Follis has been using a Ning to help students reflect on their reading of Frankenstein at mrsfollis.ning.com


• Ms. Nash has her Benton High School students use a Ning to explore topics in zoology at nashzoology.ning.com


• The wiki page Social Networks in Education offers a huge list of teachers using Nings.

Ideas for using Nings in the classroom:

• Check out this great resource produced by EduCause: 7 Things You Should Know About Nings


• Suzanne posted this blog entry about using a Ning with her high school students. Check out the comments, too. Some great ideas!


• Mrs. Follis offers some wonderful reflections on how she has used the blog portion of the Ning to help her students better understand Frankenstein.

How to Create Your Own Ning:

• First, head out to Ning.com to sign up. Then use the linked tutorials below to help you set-up your Ning network.


• After you set up your initial page you will be able to make changes using the “Manage” tab in the upper right of your Ning page.


• Liz B. Davis has put together a wonderful presentation on how to set-up your own Ning. Find the directions here.


• These embedded tutorials walk through the basics of setting up a Ning:

Tips for Creating Your Educational Ning:

• Get the ads removed from your educational Ning site by following these steps


• Liz B. Davis, an educator and writer, has a wonderful blog reflection on using Nings with students. Check out her post "Doing the Ning Thing"


• Jenny Luca, a teacher in Australia, also offers her reflections on using Nings with students.

Cool Nings for Educators

• All about using technology in the classroom, check out Classroom 2.0 - http://www.classroom20.com


• Ning for Educators - http://education.ning.com


• A space just for teachers at http://teachers20.ning.com


• English teachers check out Jim Burke's English Companion Ning at http://englishcompanion.ning.com


• The National Council for English Teachers Ning is at http://ncte2008.ning.com