STSD Curriculum & Technology Update

Regular updates and musings on curriculum and technology in the Salisbury Township School District in Allentown, PA.

21st Skills and the Presidential Campaign

The Wired Whitehouse

It is interesting to me how technology transformed the Presidential campaign from what it was in previous elections. History in the making! I think it will also be interesting to follow how Obama harnesses technology as President. And on a side not, notice, too, that he is pictured with a Macbook! 

What is this shift? --- in 5 minutes

Here is an excellent video that captures the direction of education for the future. Chris Lehman, Principal of the Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia, shares his thoughts on education in the 21st century. He talks real fast because the format of the presentation was to assemble 20 slides in 5 minutes. There are a lot of great thoughts in here. Leave yours in the comments…

Here are the actual slides in the presentation, some which you cannot see in the video:

New Definition of Collaboration

During the Monday, August 25 presentation, Louise and I talked about the new definition of collaboration and shared a brief video segment from the a keynote presentation at this summer’s National Educational Computing Conference. The entire video is actually available for viewing as a webcast on the internet by clicking here. You will be prompted for first name, last name and email. Use the following: first name: stsd; last name:stsd; email: or use your own. (The actual interview with the two teachers starts at around 24:00. You can scroll ahead to that point.)

In the video, you’ll hear directly from these two teacher who used technology and new ways of collaboration to re-imagine their classrooms. We both found this keynote very inspiring and hope you will too. If you watch the video, please leave a comment below!

Life in the Making

Our tenth grade students participated in a MAGPI videoconference with Gerda Weissman Klein, a Holocaust survivor.  In the program, Stand Up, Speak Out, Lend a Hand, her message is simple: do good by creating a service to humanity.  Given 2 months to complete a service initiative, students then gather globally for a collage presentation, an interactive videoconference event.  This year students selected an online service project for teens, calling it Life in the Making.  After creating teams, students formed 6 groups: Career Planning, Financial Planning, Social Networking, Test Preparation and Grades, Vocational Schools, and College.  Their goal was to define and explore each main topic by dividing it into sub-sections for individual and team research.  Working individually and in teams, students created a wealth of multimedia information that will help students in their career choices and pathways.

The next step in the process is to create digital research papers.  Having piloted this approach last year, I found that students actually enjoy an online research paper, and while the world has ”flattened," neither my students nor I could easily write a flat, aka hard copy paper again.  Finishing the project is the videoconference presentation, when students stand and deliver to an authentic global audience.

If you are a teacher reading this blog, you are probably wondering about assessment, and I do build that into components as I go, but since the students collaborate on the components, they also create the rubrics collaboratively as well.  So, at mid-term last year, my pilot class wrote their exam on their blogs.  Wanting to try something different this year, I created a mid-term exam that asked students to begin 2 days before the exam to create appropriate accounts, take the exam, and then have 2 additional days to edit it before final assessment.  Here’s their exam, created on their wikis.

Mid-Term Exam Information

Rationale

21st century learning expectations for students entering the work force include being a team player with information literacy skills that can be parlayed into presentation formats for global audiences. To that end, your mid-term ask you to continue to use the team-building skills you have been using in class and take them into the mid-term. For some sections of the mid-term, you may elect to work with 2--3 members of your team. For other sections, you are asked to work independently. The work that you create during the mid-term will eventually have a global audience of readers and listeners, and possibly even viewers. More to come about viewers in the .

Mid-Term Schedule / Timetable

Your exam is the second exam, from 9:35--10:55 on Wednesday, January 16. Your proctor is Miss Cotugno.
I recommend that you begin the preparation for your exam immediately. Why? Because all of these Web 2.0 tools take time to import/export. For some of them, you need to create a free account using your Gaggle email. Your work may be saved to the team’s home page, if appropriate, or to one of your individual pages. The research component must be located on one of your individual pages. You may (and should) begin to:

• Survey: create an account with Freeonlinesurveys and begin drafting 5 questions for your survey [TEAM 2-3]
• Video: locate a video [possibly at home if you do not use DiscoveryStreaming] and convert it using Zamzarthen link to it [INDIVIDUAL]
• Research: research additional information, including 3 links and 1 image, about one of your pages/subtopics [INDIVIDUAL]
• Slide Show: locate 10 images that you insert into a slide show using Animoto, SlideShare, or PhotoStory [PhotoStory should be on computers in Lab 3 but if not, it’s a fast download] [TEAM 2-3]

The work you begin during the exam period may be edited, revised, and/or completed at home, but all work for the mid-term must be completed by Thursday, 1-17, by 5 PM.

Mid-Term Exam

The links below will take you to Lesson Plans on my website.  Select Grade 10 and then January to access the Exam and Rubric.

English 10 Midterm Exam 2008

English 10 Midterm Exam 2008 RUBRIC

Extra Credit Podcast

Please see the Mid-Term Exam document for information about this extra credit option.

Mid-Term Survey

This link will take you to a survey I made for you as a sample for the mid-term using a free Web 2.0 survey builder. It is an evaluation of me and this mid-term. Please take the survey after you have taken the mid-term.

Did You Notice...

that in constructing your directions, I took your mid-term.

Students are continuing to create their podcasts, and in them you can still hear their excitement and enjoyment they shared taking this exam.  You can listen to their podcasts on their Life in the Making Gcast channel. 

One Laptop Per Child (OLPC)

Here’s an interesting experiment called the One Laptop Per Child initiative. It is what the title would indicate. The thing that I find most interesting is that its focus is on third-world countries. With all we’ve been hearing about in terms of a global society, how will the success (which is still in question) of this project impact the world, but more specifically our country. Will third-world use of the laptop as a conduit to information give them an advantage (and quite possibly a serious advantage) over our students? Are we Americans missing the boat which is about to set sail? My biggest question: What is being done to provide teachers and students in these countries with the know-how for utilizing these devices beyond what laptops tend to be used for in our country—expensive digital pencils. It all seems like a very cool experiment - so stay tuned!

“By focusing on tools of exploration and expression—rather than instruction—in an environment that emphasizes collaboration, sharing, and critique, we think the laptop will become the agency for engaging children in constructing knowledge—to ‘learn learning.’ ”

To learn more, watch this TED Talk video of OLPC founder (and MIT Media Lab Chairman) Nicholas Negroponte. “This is not a laptop project; it’s an education project,” he says. (If you are at all interested in technology in schools, you’ll want to watch this talk.)

With our Classrooms for the Future grant and several “smart” classrooms, you’ll be seeing more laptops in use by Salisbury students. If you could access laptops for your students, what kinds of learning would you imagine? We would like to hear!

If you’d like to join the conversation, fill in the form below.  Because of spam appearing on this blog, comments will be “moderated” but will be posted in their entirety.

Thanks for reading this week!