Time to Vote for More WeAreTeachers Microgrants

The WeAreTeachers (WAT) community is sponsoring another microgrant opportunity. The topic for this round of microgrants is ‘Measurable Improvement, Meaningful Progress’. To apply, click on this link and submit your microgrant proposal about strategies for implementing Response to Intervention activities or

Is there any more rewarding moment in a teacher’s career than when you are able to put a struggling student on the path to success? Response to Intervention is a key part of bringing outlying students into the fold and unlocking their true potential, but it can also be a trying and time consuming puzzle. We want to hear your best Response to Intervention ideas and strategies, and we want to help you implement them.

Submit your Response to Intervention idea and then get your friends and family to vote for it online! The ideas that garner the most votes win $200 and a Flip Video camera. Use the cash to make your idea happen and the camera to capture your work in action!

Application deadline is February 23. Voting is open February 25 – March 11. Winners are announced March 15.

Voting fopened on February 2nd for microgrant proposals submitted for the ‘Literacy: Reading is my Favorite Thing’. To vote, click here and look through the fantastic submissions by educators. Voting will close on February 16, 2010 so vote as soon as you can!

 

Net Generation Education Project: Call for Classrooms

Flat Classroom™ Project

Many of you are aware that I am the Project Administrator for the Flat Classroom™ Project. We have been busy starting the new Digiteen 10-1 and Flat Classroom 10-1 Projects. We are excited to announce the call for classroom participants for the 2010 NetGenEd Project. Below is the announcement for the start of this projec t.

Written by Vicki Davis and Julie Lindsay
http://netgened2010.flatclassroomproject.org/

Award winning author, Don Tapscott, and award winning global collaborators Julie Lindsay and Vicki Davis (co founders of the Flat ClassroomTM Project) are excited to announce the 2010 NetGenEd Project, another global collaboration to envision the future of education and social action by inspiring today’s students to study leading technology trends and create their vision for the future.

This is the second NetGenEd Project collaboration between the two organizations with the 2009 project announced at the Flat Classroom conference in Doha Qatar 2009. The 2009 Net Generation Education Project was the replacement for the Horizon Project and included 10 schools with more than 300 students. The application process is now open for schools who wish to participate in the project in March – May of 2010.

In this project, students will study and “mash up” the results of the 2010 Horizon Report from the New Media Consortium and Educause and Tapscott’s book Grown Up Digital: How the Net Generation is Changing Your World. Students will study the current research and create wiki-reports with their student partners around the world analyzing current trends and projecting future happenings based upon this collaborative analysis. This project is managed by the students who assume roles such as project manager, assistant project manager, and editors of the various wikis.

After compiling their wiki reports based upon current research, and encouraged by “expert advisors” (subject matter experts in the industry), students will then create a video in one of two strands. Video strand I competition will be the NetGenEd Challenge where students are asked to envision the future of education based upon current global technological trends. Video Strand II Competition is the Macrowikinomics Challenge where students envision the future of global social action based upon their research in current global technological trends. The video challenge will also be open to the public for submissions beginning March 1st.

“We are particularly excited about this year’s project because we’re not only asking students to envision the future of learning and the classroom but also how this media can be used to impact and improve society itself. This generation is the Net Generation and they are uniquely suited to speak for themselves in casting a vision for their own future,” says project organizer, Vicki Davis.

This project is unique in that Tapscott will interact with students in forum posts throughout the project as they discuss Tapscott’s research into NetGen and also current research as being compiled for Tapscott’s forthcoming book (being written with Anthony Williams) MacroWikinomics. Additionally, he will keynote the project via a Youtube video released in March along with a student keynote to be recorded at the Flat ClassroomTM Mini-conference at ASB Unplugged in Mumbai, India in February.

Additionally, the Discovery Educator Network is going to host a series of webinars demonstrating how to tell a compelling digital story as well as leading a book club group for educators related to the NetGenEd project. The Flat Classroom Projects are global collaborative projects organized by Vicki Davis and Julie Lindsay and sponsored by Elluminate.

If you are ready to have your students collaborate globally and follow the best practices as used in the award winning Flat ClassroomTM, Horizon, and Digiteen projects fill out this form before February 9th and apply now!.

NetGenEd Application

2010 Timeline

• 2/1- 2/12 – Application process for classrooms
• 2/12-2/18- Selection Process (classes will be notified as soon as they are selected)
• 2/15 – Ning, wiki, and google group are “live” by this date
• 2/18 – Final announcements of Classrooms
• 3/5 – Greeting from Don posted to the Ning via video
  • Weekly- discussions posted to the forum
• 2/20-3/5 – “Handshake process” – Students join Ning – post introductions
  • 3/1 – Teams announce
• 3/15-4/10 Research phase of project
  • 4/10 – Wikis complete
• 4/1 – Student Keynote
• Some time in March, there will be a live session with Don Tapscott
• 4/10-5/8 – Movie Artifact phase of project (note that there will be some overlap between Research and Movie Artifact)
• *Storyboarding
• *Outsourced video requests posted to the Ning by 3/10
• 5/10 – Final Deadline for All Movies to be posted
• 5/10-5/20 – Post project reflections, student summits, awards

 

Doodle 4 Google Time

Google announced that the ‘Doodle 4 Google‘ contest began so be sure to register your school so your students can submit their doodles to Google. Below is the information from the Google site regarding the contest:

• …Figure out a cure for cancer
• …Build a movie theater on the moon
• …Be an underwater explorer

Welcome to Doodle 4 Google, a competition where we invite K-12 students to work their artistic will upon our homepage logo. At Google we believe in thinking big and dreaming big, so this year we’re inviting U.S. kids to exercise their creative imaginations around the theme, “If I Could Do Anything, I Would …”

We’re looking forward to the kids’ answers too. Gather those art supplies and some 8.5″ x 11″paper and encourage your students to enrich us all with their creative visions for what they would do in the world, if they could do anything.

This year, a group of “Expert Jurors“, well-known illustrators, cartoonists and animators from organizations like The Sesame Street Workshop, Dr. Seuss Enterprises, The Charles Shultz/Peanuts Museum and Pixar Animation Studios, will be helping us select the 40 finalist doodles as well as attending our awards ceremony to personally meet our winners.

Registration closes at 11:59:59 p.m. Pacific Time (PT) on March 17, 2010, and entries are due by March 31, 2010 no later than 11:59:59 P.M. Pacific Time (PT). The winning doodle will be featured on our Google.com homepage on May 27, 2010.

What a fantastic theme for the contest! I can’t wait to see the winning doobles as I love to explore the doodles students have made in the past. The doodles are so creative and elaborate! You can view the winning doodles from previous contests here: http://www.google.com/doodle4google/history.html. Spring break would be a good time for students to work on their doodles. Register today and good luck the winning doodlers!

Below is the ‘Doodle 4 Google’ event video from the 2009 student contest.

 

K12 Online Conference Echo Webcast

Please join us on February 9th at 8pm EST/1am GMT at the EdTechTalk studio (http://www.edtechtalk.com/studio) for a K12 Online Conference Echo webcast hosted by Susan Van Gelder with special guest presenter, Chris Walsh.

Chris Walsh

Presentation Title: Moogpal in Action

Presentation Description: What do you get when you cross Moodle with Google Apps with Drupal? Moogpal! This presentation provides a preview of the development work currently underway by New Tech Network of high schools to integrate these free and open source tools to personalize learning, improve communication, and spur collaboration. The video includes an overview of why we chose these tools, their unique characteristics, and shows early mock-ups of how we plan to use them across our nationwide network of 40 high schools.

Check the date/time where you live for specific time zones.

 

2009 – A Year in Review on Classroom 2.0 LIVE!

Classroom 2.0 LIVE!

This Saturday, January 2, 2010, we will host a very special Classroom 2.0 LIVE! All of the special guests that have been on our show, as well as everyone who has participated in the live or recorded sessions, are invited for a special celebration. The show will mark the one year anniversary of when Classroom 2.0 LIVE! first began. Please join us for virtual food, fun and reminiscing as we celebrate all of our participants and special guests throughout 2009 on our first-year anniversary.

To commemorate the event, we have created a wiki page and are asking everyone to share one take away from any Classroom 2.0 LIVE! session at record it on our wiki page at http://wiki.classroom20.com/2009+-+A+Year+in+Review. We’d like to compile some stories, in advance of the show, from your experiences on Classroom 2.0 LIVE this year. You are invited to share a story of one take-away from any show, and briefly describe how you were able to use the idea. Was there a new idea, an “aha moment” or something new you learned that you would like share? We’ll share some of the stories during the live show and there will be opportunities to come to the mic and tell us your story. Please take a few moments to give us feedback and share how Classroom 2.0 LIVE! has touched your life.

Come prepared to share one image of a virtual refreshment or party decoration with the participants! More information and session details are at http://live.classroom20.com. If you’re new to the Classroom 2.0 LIVE! show you might want to spend a few minutes viewing the screencast on the homepage to learn how we use Elluminate and navigate the site to find the archives of previous shows and resources. Each show begins at 12pm Eastern and may be accessed in Elluminate directly using the following Classroom 2.0 LIVE! link at http://tinyurl.com/cr20live.

Peggy George, my fellow CR 20 LIVE! co host, created a very special Animoto to mark this milestone. The Animoto features the topics presented each week on Classroom 2.0 LIVE!.

 

The 2009 Edublogs Awards Ceremony Is Thursday (and Be Sure to Vote Quickly!)

2009 Edublog Awards

The 2009 Edublogs Awards Ceremony Is Thursday (and Be Sure to Vote Quickly!)

The following is taken from Steve Hargadon’s blog -

We’ve just announced the time and date for the 2009 Edublog Awards Ceremony, which will be this Thursday December 17th US Time 4:00pm PST / 7:00pm EST, which is Friday December 18th 12:00am GMT / 5:30am Mumbai / 11:00am Australia EST.  Here’s a world time link so you can be sure you have the exact time in your part of the world:  TimeandDate.com.

Remember, voting closes before this — at 11:59pm US Eastern Standard Time on Wednesday December 16th.  That’s 8:59pm US PST.  (Other international times here.)  Don’t delay!  Vote now!

The Awards Ceremony will be held in Elluminate this year (my favorite real-time web meeting platform, and–of course–my employer).  Sue Waters from Edublogs and I will be co-hosting the show.  The link to enter the show is http://tinyurl.com/edublogawards.

If you are new to Elluminate — please make sure that your computer is configured for Elluminate before the event by visiting Elluminate Support.  We’ll open up the Elluminate room 30 minutes before we start, and we encourage you to come in a few minutes early to set your microphone up and make sure you’re connected.  Those who would prefer, or have any difficulty connecting, can use the telephone bridge by dialing 913-312-1029 (US toll-free at 877-880-7307) and then using the PIN 495124. 

If you are a potential award winner we just want to make sure you know that should you win we’ll give you a minute or two to say a few words. We expect the show will last around 90 minutes, but we make no guarantees!  Following the show we’ll open the mics and webcams and have a “virtual” post-show / year-end party.  We hope you’ll join us for what you can.

I want to express my personal appreciation to all who are involved in education and contribute through blogging, social networking, social media, and other educational technologies.  The Edublog Awards are admittedly an imperfect methodology for recognizing all of those contributions, but hopefully they are a way of celebrating some of the contributions that appreciates all that we accomplish together.  If you feel someone was overlooked or under-recognized, we’ll have a chance for you to shout out “well done” to them during the show!  And from me, Thank You!

I also wanted to explain why I have not encouraged voting for my Classroom 2.0 social network in the social networking category.  Since it has won the Edublog Award for the past two years and is several times the size of the next largest network nominated, I don’t think it needs additional recognition.  As well, my being co-host this year has inclined me to want the spotlight on some of the other wonderful networks that have grown in this space.  If we had removed Classroom 2.0 from the nominations it would have created confusion, but I’ve withdrawn it from consideration for an award.  A special thanks to all of you who use Classroom 2.0 to learn and explore the potential of social networking in education!

See you online!

 

Inside the Global Collaborative Debate: Eracism Debate Finals

Eracism Project: A Flat Classroom (tm) Project

The 2009 global debate project for middle schoolers, the Eracism Project (a Flat Classroom^TM Project www.eracismproject.org) will hold the finals of Eracism on the private Eracism grid on ReactionGrid on Thursday, December 17 at 9:15 am EST – 10:15 EST.  Although the students and judges for this project will be in-world, the presentation will be streamed live with a backchannel as part of the K12 Online Conference 2009 to CCiTV Live at http://ccitv.cciu.org/.

Student finalists will be debating “Differences Make us Stronger” in the impromptu style debate moderated by Bernajean Porter (http://www.digitales.us) with the final vote on the winner taken from the judges and student participants in the project who will be in the virtual world.  This final debate is the culmination of an 8 week debate project that began with sixteen teams from 12 classrooms in 7 countries and is now down to two debate teams from Shorecrest Preparatory School in Florida and Westwood Schools in Georgia.

The organizers of the project recently shared a presentation as part of the K12Online Conference about how the project was founded, the methodologies and tools used to make the debates “feel” as synchronous as possible, even when in the asynchronous environment of VoiceThread.

Sponsors of this project include: Elluminate, VoiceThread, ReactionGrid, and Wikispaces.

Date: Thursday December 17, 9:15 am EST – 10:15 EST.

 

Flat Classroom Project Student Summits: Invitation to Join

Flat Classroom™ Project

As part of the Flat Classroom™ Project 2009-3 we are holding online Student Summits in our Elluminate virtual classroom and invite participants in the K12 Online Conference to join us. These sessions will be 45-60 minutes long and participants will have the opportunity to interact with individual student presentations as they discuss their involvement and achievements in the recent project. Participants will also be able to see how a virtual meeting that includes students and educators around the world can be successfully run as a synchronous and virtual event.  The focus is on the students, digital citizenship and online learning skills as well as cultural interaction and sharing of knowledge about the topics in the Flat Classroom™ Project.

Join our Flat Classroom™ Projects Group on this Ning: http://k12online.ning.com/group/flatclassroomprojects

Elluminate

Here is the link to our Flat Classroom™ Public Presentation room: https://sas.elluminate.com/m.jnlp?sid=2007066&password=M.BBF3F987EB53E7EAB1128C0DA2E961

Come and join us at any or all of the following Flat Classroom Student Summit times:

(Tuesday at 11:30 pm EST)  Wednesday December 16: Beijing (BISS) International School Summit #2 12:30pm China, 4:30am GMT  Timeanddate conversion

Wednesday December 16: Westwood Schools #2 1:30pm EST, 18:30 GMT Timeanddate conversion

 

San Antonio Day of Discovery

This past Saturday, December 5th, I had the great fortune to be able to participate in the Discovery Educator Network (DEN) San Antonio Day of Discovery. There was so much fun, collaboration and sharing throughout the day. Steve Dembo, Mike Bryant and Justin Karkow were fanstastic presenters! Malinda McCormack, PBS/KLRN and Jennifer Faulkner, Alamo Heights ISD/TCEA Reg 20, put on a fantastic day of learning in conjunction with the DEN guys.

It was so refreshing to work with teachers that were new to using streaming and/or technology tools in their classrooms. So many technology tools were shared in sessions with the DEN guys and put into practice in the playground area. I assisted Elaine Plybon and Linda Rush, DEN Leadship Council for Texas, for part of the last playground session and struggled using Macbooks instead of Windows computers. I couldn’t remember half of the things that I needed to to use the Macbooks effectively and certainly wasn’t much help to Elaine and Linda!

Miguel, Malinda and Steve

After the session I was invited to join Malinda, the DEN guys and Miguel Guhlin for dinner that evening at a local restaurant. My husband made us run late as he was watching a U of A game but that’s another story! The fun was in full swing as you can see from the pictures here. Even though everyone was ‘off the clock’, tech talk still occurred and we reminisced about the good ‘ole days when I first started using technology and when I worked under Miguel Guhlin as a campus instructional technologist (CIT) in the San Antonio ISD (SAISD). There was so much experience and knowledge about integrating technology at one table it was overwhelming!

I was only able to work with Miguel for a year before my position as a CIT was cut but he served as a great mentor, encourager and support in my personal learning network. I started following him on Twitter and maintaining my own blog as a result of his prodding and encouragement. As a result of following him on Twitter and subscribing to his blog,

When I first saw Miguel that morning, I excitedly greeted him and we began to talk about the many things that I am doing online. He jokingly says that he never heard, read or knew that he was my mentor and I credit my online success as a result of me following his suggestions to step out of my comfort area and take a risk by

Miguel’s prodding started the path of becoming a huge advocate for using Twitter/Plurk to learn about technology education, present for state and national conference about instructional technology, applying to become a STAR Educator with the DEN, to participating in webcasts and the webcast academy at EdTechTalk to now co-hosting the Classroom 2.0 LIVE! weekly broadcast in Elluminate/LearnCentral, moderating Ellumiante sessions and serving as the Flat Classroom™  Project Administrator with Vicki Davis and Julie Lindsay.

This long, wandering, ever growing path all started with Miguel modeling the right way to do things personally and professionally with technology. I followed his lead and been afforded some awesome opportunities that I am truly grateful for and work with some awesome colleagues. Steve Hargadon is immensely supportive of me and helps me grow all the time interviewing people and conducting Elluminate sessions. Julie and Vicki are phenomenal people to work with and I have learned so much from my personal learning network that would not have been possible had I not started following my passion of doing things onlineand creating a digital footprint.

To top off all the fun, it was Steve’s birthday and he celebrated it San Antonio style at dinner! You can read more about the Day of Discovery from Miguel’s blog at http://www.mguhlin.org/2009/12/san-antonio-day-of-discovery-podcasts.html. (The picture is a bit blurry as I just got my Blackberry a week or so before and was still new at using the features of the phone.)

 

My Edublog Award Nominations

2009 Edublog Awards

The deadline is fast approaching and I procrastinated long enough! My nominations are below:

Best teacher blog: CoolCat  Teacher http://coolcatteacher.blogspot.com/

Most influential blog post: TJ on a Journey – “Every Kid Deserves a Ms. Kaune” http://tjonajourney.blogspot.com/2009/08/every-kid-deserves-ms-kaune.html

Best educational use of a virtual world – DEN SL Blog  http://blog.discoveryeducation.com/secondlife/

Best resource sharing blog – Miguel Guhlin – “Around the Corner” http://www.mguhlin.org/

Best educational tech support blog – Teach 42  http://www.teach42.com/

At a later time I will expand upon why I nominated each blog but for now I will conclude this post as I want to meet the nomination deadline!