RJ Stangherlin

Keystone Technology Integrator and STAR Discovery Educator

This site is for Mrs. Stangherlin's classes at Salisbury High School.

Websites for Educators 04/16/2009

• The Global Education Collaborative - Helping Teachers and Students Reach the World

  This is a community for teachers and students interested in global education. Contribute by adding media, conversation, and collaborative project ideas. Make sure you post an intro in the forum!

  tags: teachers, collaboration, global, education, ning, web2.0, globaleducation

  • Helping Teachers and Students Reach the World - post by lindseybp

• Global Learning Portal - HOME

  The Global Learning Portal facilitates development and education initiatives by linking online educators, international development practioners, ministries and civil society organizations. Educators in Afghanistan, Central Asia, Zambia and Latin America are connecting via GLP. Learn more about us.

  tags: teachers, Global Learning, collaboration

• Center for Interactive Learning and Collaboration (CILC): Advancing education through videoconferencing and other collaborative technologies. - Center for Interactive Learning and Collaboration

  Advancing learning through videoconferencing and other collaborative technologies.

  tags: teachers, videoconferencing, collaboration, technology, edtech, Internet2, web2.0, Video

  • Funding opportunities, search for events, success stories - post by cpudawg2k

• TakingITGlobal - Inspire. Inform. Involve.

  Join the largest online community of youth interested in global issues and creating positive change.

  tags: teachers, TIG, global, global learning, takingitglobal, activism, youth, issues

• City Montessori School - Social Networking For Schools

  The Schools United website is a networking site dedicated solely to the education community worldwide. It provides schools and staff with the free facility to share educational resources and experiences.

  tags: teachers, global, global learning, Schools United

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

The New Media Literacies

With the approach of the EduCon 2.1 conversation and conference next weekend, the MIT Tech TV video, The New Media Literacies series, posted by Randy Ziegenfuss, Director of Data and Technology at Salisbury High School, becomes even more relevant. As a team of administrators and educators participate in the EduCon conversations and sessions, we will explore the purpose of school, how to create engaged learning and flat connections, integrating technology, and transforming schooling in and for the 21st century. Those of us attending are looking forward to engaging in a participatory culture, and will be sharing our learning on our Best Practices wiki.
new media literacies
media literacies
literacy
EduCon 2.1
education
Turbo Tagger

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Teach42: Thirty Days To Being A Better Blogger

I found this fascinating quote today:

So why do I mention Clustrmaps if that isn’t specifically today’s challenge?  Quite simply, to remind you that it isn’t just the people in your state, country, or even continent that are going to find your content.  When you publish your thoughts and ideas on your blog, you are publishing for a global audience.  It’s entirely possible, and even likely, that you are getting visitors from around the world without you even realizing it.  So shouldn’t we be making our content as accessible as possible?Teach42

You should read the whole article.

As our school district’s community of learners grows, we add a rich diversity of readers, collaborators, and creators.  So, shouldn’t we find out where our readers are?  Clustrmaps is an easy visual way to aggregate your data.  If you want more data, try Google Analytics.  I’ve added both of these stat trackers to my blogs.  Another great tool is Google Translate; anyone can now read my blog in their native language.  As a teaching tool for ESL students, this device has unlimited uses and can be applied to a wiki as well.  A final great tool is Reblog from Zamanta.  By posting using this tool, the Reblog icon will be added to my blog, making it really easy for someone to grab a quotation my blog and “reblog” it on theirs, adding associated links, photos, articles, tags and more.  Best of all, you can add Zamanta to Firefox (or if anyone still uses it, IE 7).  Not exactly TM or IM, but a faster better way to blog.

If you are interested in more blogging tips, take a look at Thirty Days To Being A Better Blogger, created by Steve Dembo.

Related Posts from Steve Dembo:

* Be a Better Blogger in just 30 Days
* Blogging for your own future reference
* As a blogger, how do you define success?
* Day 1: All about the “About” page

What’s in a VoiceThread?

Quite a lot, actually.  Since English 11’s next Independent Reading Project is the creation of a VoiceThread related to the book, I thought you might like to explore the technology.  Here’s a great tutorial to help you along the way.  Coming soon--my VoiceThread on how to make your project’s VoiceThread.

VoiceThread
project-based learning
education
technology
Turbo Tagger

Think Pink: A Whole New Mind

If you have not read Dan Pink‘s A Whole New Mind, you really should.  Teachers, parents, students, everyone really should read this book.  But if time is the issue (and who ever has enough), why not join us [NOTE: DATE CHANGED] THURDSAY, DECEMBER 13 at 7:00 PM to listen to Dan Pink via a Discovery Educator Network webinar.  It just might be the smartest best hour you’ve spent in a long time.  Why?  Because Dan Pink will change your mind forever about your future.  Will empathetic right-brain thinkers create a new economy with a whole new brain?  What will drive the change?  Quick clue-->

For a good summary of his major points, click this link.  If you would like to join us [over 300 participants already registered, and some of them are my students], click here.  If you cannot attend, you can view the archived event here Just in case you ever wondered if you are left or right-brain dominant, here’s a whole new way to know. 

Did You Know?

Definitely worth watching.

Karl Fisch’s Did You Know?

Karl Fisch’s What If

Karl Fisch’s 2020 Vision

Jennifer Dorman’s Adaptation [with permission of Karl Fisch] of Did You Know?

Definitely Worth Visiting.

The Fischbowl

A Web of Connections: Why the Read Write Web Changes Everything

Just finished an amazing webinar with Will Richardson on A Web of Connections: Why the Read Write Web Changes Everything.  Long story short: because the web is both read and write.  The write aspect of the web profoundly changes how we learn: in social networking communities.  Richardson’s thesis is simple: today’s students are digital natives who create their own learning environments where they make global connections.  What, as educators, Richardson says we need to come to terms with is the issue of control.  Students are engaged in connectivism: building and maintaining social networks where connections hold as much [or possibly more] relevance than content.  Digital natives build communities of independent learners, unlike the way most educational systems work: on dependence [of students’ learning to teachers’ knowledge].  Richardson suggests that whether we like it or not, the web has made learning transparent, and teachers need to move forward as connectors of information inside this educational mindset. 

Perhaps, for those of you who may not have participated in a webinar, I should give you a figurative screenshot.  Think of a webinar as a videoconference without the video.  What you see is a screen that the presenter controls [content] with audio via teleconferenciog.  But that’s only the beginning.  The sidebar discussion [imagine a chat room smaller screen insert] is often as exciting as the presentation, and just as lively.  Then picture many of the participants also Skyping [yet a second chat room, but separate from the webinar host].  Let’s count: webinar, sidebar, Skyping.  Add to that taking notes and blogging.  About this point you are losing your Digital Immigrant status.  And to this most students would add texting with cell phones, working on facebook, myspace, or fanfiction, and editing their wikispace.  Definitely Digital Natives.  This is our community.  This is how they learn, or would, if we let them. 

Richardson believes that within the next five years, the face of education will change exponentially.  We seem to have choices: move with it or be moved by it.  I think of our group as change agents, working collaboratively to provide the best possible education for our students.  With that in mind, here’s Will Richardson’s webinar wiki:

A Changing World

Some statistics.
*1 billion people on the Internet
*China will soon be the largest English speaking country in the world.
*China has more honors students than we have students.
*Name this country
*“None of the top 10 jobs that will exist in 2010 exist today.”—Richard Riley, (Former US Sec. of Ed.)
*57 million blogs, 1.7 million posts a day.
*We can all be community journalists.
*Millionaires in virtutal worlds.
*Mark Zuckerberg, the soon to be teenage billionaire
*The problem is not change...we’ve always had change. The problem is the speed of change, and that change is cultural now. Because of that it feels like our kids are leading the way with technology

Many more questions than answers.

The Web is Changing How We Learn

*Learning is not about acquiring knowledge as much as it is about building networks. (Articulated by George Siemens.)
*We are at times teachers and at times learners. Our roles shift with each interaction.
*My blog, Weblogg-ed is an example of network creation. It’s where my most powerful learning has taken place. Here are a couple of examples: “Dear Kids, You Don’t Have to Go to College” and “Owning the Teaching...and the Learning.”
*The power of being “clickable” is that teachers can find you. (Google search)
*My good fortune is that I have potential teachers visiting from around the world.
*Our kids are already creating their own networks. Fan Fiction is one site where “affinity groups” meet.
*And like it or not, MySpace is another example of kids creating their own networks.
*But so are student role models, (Meg Cabot)

*Millions and millions of people are participating in the new social networking services. (Wikipedia)
*But we can help our kids to start creating their own networks as well and work with people around the world. (Nata Village)
*Wikiville (John Bidder) is another example. And Skype is a tool that we can use to maintain our networks.

*And networking doesn’t just have to happen through text. (ClipBandits)
*We can also build networks in virtual worlds. (Second Life)

The Web is Changing our Assumptions About Knowledge, Information and Literacy

*It’s not as much about content anymore as much as it is about context. Knowledge and information used to be scarce...that’s what our was built upon
*But today, I can learn anything, anytime, anywhere providing I have access. Knowledge is no longer scarce. (MIT)

*And we tend to look at knowledge as hard or unchanging...but these days, knowledge is soft. It’s constantly changing. (Wikipedia)
*In this world, we cannot only seek information, but information seeks us. (Pageflakes)
*But in a world where anyone can create and publish information, how do we know what to trust? (Dove Beauty)

*How do we teach our students (and ourselves) to make sense of a much more complex literacy regarding who to trust as authoritative sources. When we can be manipulated or be the manipulator.
*We can no longer be “just” readers...we must be editors as well.

*And reading is no longer a passive, linear activity that deals simply with text. How do we read multimedia and hypertext? (A Tank of Gas)
*In this world, we must read with an ear for writing and responding, engaging and interacting.

The Web is Changing our Assumptions about Classrooms and Teaching

*If teachers are no longer the arbiters of knowledge in the classroom, our roles need to change.
*Now we have the opportunity to be connectors, to bring our classrooms to the world in a variety of ways. We can find other teachers who may know more than we do. (Secret Life of Bees)

*We can also connect our students to other students around the world so they can learn together. (Flat Classrooms Wiki)
*And in a world where all of our students can be content producers as well as content consumers, we need to re-envision the work we ask them to do.
*Our students can teach in powerful ways. (Pre Cal)
*As Marco Torres says, students’ work ”should have wings.” (Buckle Up)

We Need a 2020 Vision for Education

*How do we learn to help our students leverage the technologies they are already using instead of have them check them at the door? (Especially when our students can get around our efforts anyway.)

*How do we change? How do we re-envision teaching for a vastly changed world?
*How do we the use of these technologies in our own practice?
*It starts with one small step

*******
Let’s take that one small step.