Events and Happenings:

1. Book sale!  NMSA is having a clearance sale until March 31st.
2. Book sale Part 2!  AudibleKids is having a kids book sale this weekend.  Go to kids.audible.com for free downloads.  (Note:  Saw this on Fox and Friends while channel surfing this morning.  The site is being bombarded so I can’t do much verification on this.  Caveat Emptor.)
3. NMSA’s Middle Level Essentials Conference April 23-24, 2009.
4. NMSA ‘08 Technology Focus Video.  This video spotlight focuses on the building of the technology demonstration classrooms at last year’s Denver Annual Conference.
5. Educational Technology Leadership Conference, June 24th at Holt High School, Holt, MI. Register for the event now and hurry to get your presentation proposals in before the deadline!
6. Any information on the Ontario Middle Level Association?  Their site has gone dark and we hope this does not mean the demise of the Association.
7. NMSA ‘09 Invitation Video:  Indianapolis,  IN Conference  November 5-7, 2009.
   • ATTENTION Michigan Association of Middle School Educators & Friends: MAMSE is putting together a bus for the trip to the National Middle School Association’s Annual Conference in Indianapolis, IN this fall.  Ride down to the conference in a luxury bus with satellite access for Twittering, Facebooking, and other 21st Century technology access for less than $100.00.  With all the conversations with middle school teachers on the bus, I wonder if we could call this a mini-MAMSE conference?  There’s nothing like getting together with people who love the people we love:  our students.  (Some of you thought I was going to say something else!)  Getting together with folks like that is energizing and priceless.  Email Teresa Sutherland for information and details.  Don’t forget to mention you heard about it on Middle School Matters.
8. The National Forum to Accelerate Middle Grades Reform will be holding their annual conference in June.  See the flyer at their website for details.
9. Free Professional Development through Webinars! NMSA is offering previously recorded webinars for free from their website.
10. Classroom 2.0’s Live Calendar.
11. Classroom 2.0’s Ning Blog:  This week’s discussion is on the uses of Podcasting for Teachers.  Archived content is available.
12. Second Life:
    • No Events specified.  Regular Tuesday meetings are scheduled.  See the board on the ISTE Island for up to the minute details.
    • Video:  Educational Uses of Second Life
    • Land of Lincoln is hosting a talk by Ioseph Mikoyan on Civil War Artillery.  The event will be held in the army camp on Lincoln on Saturday, March 21, at 5pm slt.  Joe is a member of a real life artillery reenactment group, with a wealth of knowledge about artillery practices during the War.  This will be sure to be a fascinating lecture, complete with period slides in illustration.
13. From the Twitterverse:

• From GardenGlen’s blog:  Promethean users, I just discovered that free OmniDazzle (Macintosh) http://url.ie/1b8p works w/ #INSPIRE flipcharts, I like “Comic” so far
• From edupreneur:  “Earlier this month, we released the findings of our first online survey of education communicators.  The results were both informative and interesting.  The full results can be found here — blog.educommunicators.com/2009/01/12/the-results-are-in-2008-educommunicators-online-survey.aspx The highlights include:
  * Educommunicators are interested in sharing best practices and exploring ways to effectively use new media
  * Email is still the most effective way to communicate
  * Finding the right message remains our primary challenge in our daily practice
  * We’re looking for ongoing information on the issues and tools affecting our jobs
  The primary question, now, if what do we do with these results?  How do we use these findings to help build a better online community, a place where marketing and communications professionals in the education community can find real value and can make a real contribution?  These are questions I and the Educommunicators board have been wrangling with for the past week or so.
  Based on these findings and the insights individual Educommunicator members have provided me over the past few months, Educommunicators is committed to moving forward the following goals in 2009:
  * Establishing an email list (or a Google group) that allow us to easily circulate information across the group and encourage our hundreds of members across the nation to share and contribute on topics and issues important to them
  * Collecting best practices.  Now is the time to send along your case studies, your stories, and your experiences so we can begin collecting a database for all to learn from.
  * Strengthening relationships with other organizations, particularly NSPRA and EWA, to help supplement the services and information they are providing their members
  * Providing primers and tools on effectively using new media, conducting media relations, and enhancing community relations as part of our jobs
  One of the first steps will be to take the contact info for all of those engaged through Facebook, LinkedIn, and other sources and combine them into one comprehensive e-mailing list.  If you know of others who should be on that list, please share their contact information.
  As you know, Educommunicators is a social networking experiment.  Its success depends on the involvement and interaction of our members.  We need you to participate.  We need you to share.  We need you to be part of the solution.  Over the next month, we will build the email list to begin this discussion.  In the meantime, please send along your case studies, examples of good work, campaigns, websites, and anything else you think members will benefit from.  It will then fall to the Educommunicators board to ensure they are properly shared and used to build a foundation for improving our craft and improving our industry.
  Email anything and everything to info@educommunicators.com.  And if you’d like to take more of an active role (more active than providing your individual insights) we can use your talents.  Just offer them up.”
• karlyb citation generator – http://www.bibomatic.com/
  
• LeoLaporte Liked “Is the social stream the new email? » VentureBeat” http://ff.im/-1DIFX
• edupreneur Reforming Education: Part 2 Teachers. Heady stuff for a Fri, but important. http://tinyurl.com/dfkdqf (via @DowntoEarthMama)

Educating the Whole Child Petition:  http://www.wholechildeducation.org/getinvolved/thewholechild/
Followup to last week’s Moodle discussion on Classroom 2.0.  http://www.mguhlin.org/2009/03/moodle-questions-during-classroom-20.html

Shout-outs:

Those who visited iTunes to get our stars back:
TWilliamson15
MikeTeacher
SherrieR
… and the three others who remain nameless.  (Their choice, not ours.  No witness protection programs involved because the know us.  Really.)

Web Sightings:

Shawn’s New Favorite Website:  Let Me Google That For You.  Ever have that colleague that pops into your room asking you a question they could have gone to Google for themselves?  This website is your new best friend.
Faux Smoking:  The New Smarties Fad! (Here’s an example of a Tiny Url:  http://tinyurl.com/de7lhu)

Missed the MACUL conference?  See the keynotes online.  Here’s one:  Friday Keynote.

From MACUL:  Steve Dembo has a great presentation on Social Networking Policies .  His presentation is posted on the Discovery Educators Network site.

http://www.readwritethink.org/materials/storymap/
http://www.jasonohler.com/storytelling/index.cfm

Because Shawn can’t remember what he tells Troy to try:  www.evernote.com.  (*NOTE: Troy told Shawn about this).

Advisory Ideas:

• 8 Scientific Screw-ups.
• Why Pi? Or, for an Advisory activity Why (anything)? and make a video explanation for it.
• Try the Eyeballing Game and then discuss the need for patience and use of tools.  They play it again!