[Video] Sesame Street: Ben Stiller Sings About Friends & Neighbors

 This is a post I will be using with the preschool as we introduce the people in your community. This one features the mailman.

[Video] Sesame Street: Ben Stiller Sings About Friends & Neighbors

New Literacies Institute

I'm here at the 2010 New Literacies Institute. It's been great. The speakers are dynamic. Lots of information has been disseminated. You can check out the Wiki at: http://newlitinstitute2010.wikispaces.com/
Be sure to check out the resources there.

The Importance of Right Brain Thinking

After reading the following blog entry, The Importance of Right-Brain Thinking, by Kate Canales I was even more convinced of the importance of a well-rounded school curriculum that fosters the development of creativity. This is best served by the related arts. Yet, in our push for standardized-testing and the slashing of educational budgets, it is the arts that are most often cut. We somehow believe that slashing/reducing these offerings will have little effect on the future of education. 

It's nice to know that other distinguished people such as Daniel Pink and Ken Robinson believe just the opposite. They speak of the need for fostering creativity. Daniel Pink in his book, A Whole New Mind, talks about the importance of right-brained thinking and how those types of thinkers will rule the future. Ken Robinson gives a thought-provoking talk on how schools are killing our creativity.

Read the blog entry by Kate Canales linked to above and listen to Ken Robinson's 20 minute talk and then decide if eliminating the arts from our schools' curriculum is in the best interests of our students. No one is downplaying the importance of teaching our students the content and skills necessary to be successful in life, but it's equally as important to nurture their creative side. If we don't value right-brain thinking in our schools today, are we truly preparing them for tomorrow? Maybe, it's time to acknowledge the value of the arts in developing the whole child.

Alan November Video Clip

I came across this video clip entitled, "Myths and Opportunities: Technology in the Classroom" by Alan November. The clip is very well done for the way it is filmed and for its content. It begins by having the viewer feel like he/she is driving inside a car down the streets of Marblehead, MA. Alan talks about how Marblehead was one of the largest towns before the Revolutionary War. He speaks about how people survived there by trading on the open sea. These people had a sense of being part of a global nation. Alan believes globalization is something many people today don't have a sense of. He goes on to state that schools don't value that kind of thinking. Alan works with schools trying to convince them to globalize the curriculum.

Alan November believes that schools don't do a very good job of developing critical thinking as a skill. He goes on to say that we have to do a better job of identifying the critical skills we want kids to have in school. He states several skills that kids will need to focus on in school. Kids should take on the roles of: global communicator, global researcher, tool builder who works with search engines and internal collaborator who works with Google docs.

What Alan November talks about is that pedagogical paradigm shift where the student becomes a self-directed learner. They become reflective, ask questions, figure out what they have learned over time and what they have to do next. They become lifelong learners.

Alan has some great ideas and if you get a chance, you might want to watch this video.

Back on Track Again

I've been negligent about posting, so I'm going to try to be a little more faithful about posting some news, thoughts, etc. I have. One of the things that I'd like to share is the link to a wonderful online conference. This K-12 online conference has been held around the same time every year. This year's conference features many wonderful presentations. If you have about an hour's block of time on any given day, listen to one of the presentations. You can't beat learning in the comfort of your home.

BLC09 - Bob Pearlman

It was great to hear Bob Pearlman, director of strategic planning for the New Technology Foundation in Tucson, Arizona. New Tech high schools are revolutionary in the way they are designed and the way the way the school day is organized. Students participate in project-based learning, create e-Portfolios, and manage their own learning and personal development.
You can read more about these schools by going to Bob's website. You will find video clips depicting these schools.

BLC09 - Howie DiBlasi

I attended a workshop presented by Howie DiBlasi. He talked about the need for schools to change to meet the needs of the 21st century learner. There were so many ideas that Howie presented to us. His websites are chock full of resources and will take time to go through.

Here are his websites:
Howie DiBlasi and Tools for the Classroom

BLC09 Benjamin Zander

I feel both energized and overwhelmed after attending Alan November's "Building Learning Communities" conference in Boston last week. So many wonderful ideas were shared, so many possibilities, yet I feel the need to step back from all of this and give myself time to process.

It was a wonderful conference that featured the top names in educational technology as presenters. Alan also brought in many interesting keynote speakers as, one of which was Benjamin Zander, conductor of the Boston Philharmonic. His speech was about possibilities. It was one of the most motivating speeches I have ever heard. Who would ever imagine that one could sing "Happy Birthday" with passion, yet that's what we all did!

Benjamin compared his experiences with coaching an orchestra to teaching. He spoke of education as the opening up of new categories, not the transformation of information.

Benjamin talked about thinking outside the box - seeing the possibilities. He used the 9 dots example to demonstrate this. If you're not familiar with this, go to this website. If you are having difficulty solving the problem, you might want to ask yourself: What assumptions am I making that I don’t know I’m making?

Benjamin relishes in making mistakes. As a matter of fact, he celebrates each one by enthusiastically saying, "How fascinating". He sees mistakes as learning opportunities.

It was a wonderful 2 hours. Benjamin left us with his thoughts on how you should lead your life. He asked us to remember:
• Life is all invented.
• There's a world of possibilities.
• Rule #6 (Don’t take yourself too seriously.)

If you'd like to listen to Benjamin speak, there's a 20 minute presentation you can view at Ted Talks. It's worth watching and is sure to leave you feeling energized!

Voki

Voki is a site where you can create a character and record your voice. It's an interesting way to deliver a message or to create a scenerio. This is the speaking character I created to deliver a message for week 5 of our summer 09 Moodle course. Click on the play button to listen.

NECC 2009 - Library of Congress - PD for Teachers

I attended a presentation by representatives from the Library of Congress. As you know, the Library of Congress has wonderful learning resources for teachers and students. What you might not be aware of is their newly designed professional development website for teachers. You can go to the Library of Congress link to learn more. Select teachers from the sidebar, and then select professional development. Click on TPS Direct (Teaching with Primary Sources) to gain access to their PD site. You have the option of putting together your own professional development plan or you can select from a list of self-directed modules. There are several modules. Some examples are "how to use the Library of Congress, one on how to analyze primary sources, another on understanding the inquiry process. There are 10 pieces of content totaling 12 1/2 hours of PD. However, you can select as many hours as you'd like and the modules that you'd like to study. There are PDF files of lessons and activities that are downloadable and the best part about this is it's free! They plan on collaborating with an online PD organization and their goal is to be able to upload some of these resources to Moodle. They also plan to add 10 more content pieces.

Be sure to visit the Library of Congress website to check out this newly designed PD opportunity. You might also want to peruse their website. It's chock full of wonderful resources.

NECC 2009 - Jamie Mckenzie Presentation

I had the opportunity to attend the NECC 2009 conference in Washington D.C. at the end of June. In each of these posts, I would like to share one of the sessions or share something I found interesting. In this first post, I will share some of the points that Jamie Mckenzie made in his session: "Beyond Mere Gathering: Converting Social Networking into Collaboration and Synergy". You can go to his website to view his thoughts.

One of his key points was the importance of synthesis and the need to train people on how to synthesize. He spoke about Edward De Bono's "six colored hats". It's a great model for thinking. Jamie mentioned that we are great at "vertical thinking", but most of us need to become better at "lateral thinking". That's the intentional wondering, how we find another way of doing something. He highlighted this by using a visual thesaurus. You can type in a word and get synonyms for it. Click on a synonym and it takes you to other synonyms. It branches out in many interesting ways. There is a fee to subscribe to this program, but it is quite powerful in developing this kind of "later thinking". I would imagine it would be a powerful tool to use when studying content in any subject area.

There was reference to allowing some trial experiences of social networking. Microsoft is trying something that mimics Facebook, but in a safer environment. It's called "Sharepoint". It might be worth taking a look at this to see if it could be used in our schools.