Month: July 2008

MSMBy Shawn McGirr

A Fish Tank for Your Classroom!

They say that watching fish can lower your blood pressure and reduce stress.  Both of those are coming with the beginning of school and so in the interest of keeping our audience healthy and entertained, I’d like to direct you to the Lake Superior State University’s Fish Cam.  Use this on your computer at work to reduce your blood pressure and stress.  This way you won’t have to clean an actual fish tank, feed actual fish, or worry about which kid is going to take them home for the summer!  Now where did I put my fishing pole and WonderBread Silver Streaks . . .

I’ll be on Lake Michigan this week going after the salmon.  Wave and I’ll wave back.

NMSA08, Podcast, UncategorizedBy Troy Patterson

Podcast #41 – Free Kindle!, (please Jack and/or Jeff!), Free iTunes (U), and Free Second Life!

News & Events

1.  Start planning for October’s Month of the Young Adolescent!
2.  Ohio Middle School Association’s Annual Conference, February 19-20, 2009 in Sandusky, OH. 
3.  Institute for Middle Level Leadership.  July 20-23
4.  Best Practices for Student Success.  July 28 & August 6 
5.  NMSA Annual Conference, October 30 – November 1 (Video sample) 
6.  Summer Teacher-to-Teacher professional development program registration is open. (free)
7.  Canadian National Middle Years Conference, November 5, 6, & 7 in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
8.  Rick Stiggins has a new Balanced Assessment Manifesto posted at NMSA‘s website.
9.  NMSA is looking for a new journal editor.  Applications due August 1, 2008. 
10.  Michigan Association of Middle School Educators Elections are posted:
PRESIDENT-ELECT:    Alice Seppanen
TREASURER:    Charlene Pike
Suzanne Lappin, Member-At-Large
Nic Cooper, Region 2
 David Feldman, Region 4
Mary Ann Schmedlen, Region 8
 Sherry Lambertson, Region 11
David Baldus, Region 12
 Joe Somerville, Region 13
11.  Looking for news from Ontario Middle Level Educators Association.  If you have any, drop us a line. 
12.  Wisconsin Association of Middle Level Educators annual conference is coming up October 9-10, 2008. 
13.  The New England League of Middle Schools has a whole bevy of professional development planned for the 2008-2009 school year and you can access it here. 
14.  ADVISORY IDEAS NEEDED:  NELMS is putting together an Advisory Resource page with lessons for you to use.  They are asking for submissions here by January 1, 2009.  If your entry is used, you will be entered in a raffle for a 3 day NELMS conference ticket. 
15.  Second Life Education Community Conference (SLEDcc) Announcement:  (From the webpage…) “The Second Life Education Community Conference 2008 will take place in conjunction with the Official Second Life Community Convention 2008 in Tampa, Florida (US) and in the virtual world of Second Life on September 5 – 7th, 2008. All members of the Second Life educational community and anyone with an interest in the use of virtual worlds technology in education is invited to attend! Please note: Registration fees cover both the SLEDcc and SLCC events! Conference registration and fees only apply to those going to SLEDcc/SLCC in Tampa, in-world only participants do not need to register or pay any fees.”  Here’s your chance to attend a free conference during the first week of school.  The conference schedule can be found here. 

If your state or regional middle level association is organizing an event, please let us know at middleschooleducators@gmail.com. 

Shout outs:
1.  Jeff Bezos, we’d love to put a free Kindle through its paces at NMSA ’08 … 
2.  Ron in New Jersey, thanks for the email.
3.  The lake trout at 140 feet down who saw my lure at 100 feet down and took it last week, you were delicious … 
4.  Our international friends – even the Spammers!

Copyright Fight looms over College Textbooks
http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/top-news/?i=54684;_hbguid=1a943a6a-3bb8-4f98-9bd7-ab945e14b76c
The high cost of college textbooks has spawned a new battleground in the fight to keep students from downloading copyright-protected materials over the internet: textbook file sharing.

Court upholds Teacher firing for looking at porn
http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/top-news/?i=54693;_hbguid=80f259df-0ff1-423f-8e9c-c0b047174269


Visually very polished. Most of the subject area categories have between 1-10 episodes. Many of the episodes are around 1 minute in length. There are some gems. (A video on Formative Assessment includes









Podcast, Tech, UncategorizedBy Troy Patterson,

Podcast #40 – Google, Wisdom in Group Learning, and More Technology in Education!

Book Update: 
Troy:
Getting to Got It! – Done

Shawn:
Alan November – Done
Wisdom of Crowds – In progress

News & Events

1.  Start planning for October’s Month of the Young Adolescent!
2.  Ohio Middle School Association’s Annual Conference, February 19-20, 2009 in Sandusky, OH. 
3.  Institute for Middle Level Leadership.  July 13-16 & 20-23
4.  Best Practices for Student Success.  July 28 & August 6 
5.  NMSA Annual Conference, October 30 – November 1 (Video sample) 
6.  Summer Teacher-to-Teacher professional development program registration is open. (free)
7.  Canadian National Middle Years Conference, November 5, 6, & 7 in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

Interesting tidbit:  “It is crucial that all presenters send a copy of their session handouts to NMSA no later than September 21, 2008. It is our plan to offer ALL session handouts to participants electronically. For this reason, we prefer to receive the handouts electronically, but can accept paper copies as well. Please plan to prepare your handouts accordingly.” – from the NMSA Annual Conference website.  It appears that all presentation notes and handouts will be available in electronic form to all conference attendees.  One third of my handouts from one of my presentations this year walked out the door without the person taking it hearing the presentation.  Its good for more exposure to a wider audience, but at the same time the handout doesn’t contain the visuals and the examples that a presentation gives either.  Is this a good balance?  I admit, it was nice having Rick DuFour’s presentation on my iPhone so I could look at it whenever I wanted to.

Shout outs:

  1. Pamela in Farmington, thanks for the email.
  2. Ron in New Jersey, thanks for the email.
  3. Van Drinkard of Bishopville, South Carolina


Reader & Listener questions:

  1. How can Core Content Curriculum Standards keep up with the speed of technology advancement when entire technologies evolve or become irrelevant within the span of a child’s elementary to middle school years? (i.e. floppies to flash memory to network storage)
  2. With an emerging group of older adults moving out of the business world and choosing education as their new career path, what are your thoughts about the value they bring to the middle school classroom environment where real-world connections to content are more critical then ever?


From the net:

  1. Advice needed, everyone!  I have a math teacher friend who wants to set up a website that will allow:
    Kids to keep it up-to-date at school.
    Kids to access it at home.
    Kids to access a blog section.
    Also, of course, she would like to be able to enter in the regular
    stuff, like problem of the day and homework.
    She also wants to be able to keep a long term record of what has been
    on the site during the year.
    And – of course – she wants to be able to do this within the confines
    of a teacher’s salary.

    Any great ideas, anyone?


SAT Scores:  Better indicator with or without a writing section? 
Several years ago schools jumped into action because the SAT was adding a writing section to the test.  So what has been the impact of the change? 

TED Talk – Visual Perspectives – Chris Jordan – Picturing Excess
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/279


Will We Let Google Make Us Smarter?
http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2008/06/will_we_let_goo.php