Category: Web Spotlight

advisory, Podcast, Tech, Web SpotlightBy Troy Patterson

MSM 169 “I got you a cookie!” Resources Bonanza!

Jokes You Can Use:

The prison officer tells the warden, “Sir, I have to report that ten prisoners have broken out.”
The alarmed warden says, “Blow the whistles, sound the alarms, alert the police.
With a surprised look the officer says, “Shouldn’t we call the doctor first – it looks as if it might be measles.

Did you hear about the skunk that went to church?
“He had his own pew.”

A nursery school teacher was delivering a station wagon full of kids home one day when a fire truck zoomed past. Sitting in the front seat of the fire truck was a Dalmatian dog.
The children fell to discussing the dog’s duties.
“They use him to keep crowds back,” said one youngster.
“No,” said another, “he’s just for good luck.”
A third child brought the argument to a close. “They use the dogs,” she said firmly, “to find the fire hydrant.”

It was an elegant dinner party and the hostess had left nothing to chance, except that a little water had splashed on the marble floor. And when the waiter came into the dining room carrying the beautiful roast suckling pig, he slipped and fell flat, sending the roast flying. “Don’t worry, Tomas,” said the hostess calmly. “Just take the roast back to the kitchen and bring out the other one.”

On Our Mind:

Job changes.

Week “off”.

Eileen Award

Monte Tatom


Advisory:

Belongings

By SAM DOLNICK
There are three million immigrants in New York City. When they left home, knowing it could be forever, they packed what they could not bear to leave behind: necessities, luxuries, memories. Here is a look at what some of them brought.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/nyregion/27belongings.html

Middle School Science Minute

by Dave Bydlowski (k12science or davidbydlowski@mac.com)
GIS (Geographic Information Systems) with middle school students. (We attach the device to an area they can’t reach, that way if they wander off the floor we can find them!  Oh, wait, that’s the mental ward . . .)

From the Twitterverse:

*Larryferlazzo Updates to “The Best Resources For Helping Teens Learn About The Importance Of Sleep”
*DanielPink Take 2 minutes and tell Congress not to cut arts education . . .
*pammoran inspiring post by MissShuganah about one of those 1 in a million teachers who changes lives http://is.gd/bw6GB7
*DanielBeylerian Top 46 #Free #Mac Downloads –
Top 100 #Free #iPhone Apps – Top 100 #Free #Android Apps –
*willrich45 If Lassie could Tweet:
*MSPortal2 Learning From Mom Boosts Low-Income Kids’ School Readiness http://1.usa.gov/iiA1tB
*russeltarr The seven secrets behind great teaching: http://tinyurl.com/3wmr4dp
*brasst iLearn – iPod touch and iPad Apps gameslab.radford.edu/iLearn/apps.ht… Created by students, for students
*Larryferlazzo RT @shermandorn: “Give me the money or I shoot my foot!” and other political theories of education reform
*drmmtatom QR Codes – What are they & how can I use them in my classroom? | The Spectronics Blog http://zite.to/m528ca via @Ziteapp #fhuedu642

ASCD Inservice: Seven Ways to Go from On-Task to Engaged #fhuedu610 http://tinyurl.com/3vfgyhr
*pearson Pearson eText for iPad youtube.com/watch?v=6eIBta…
*theresawhite “@NAESP: Study Links Job Stress In Teachers To Student Achievement http://j.mp/mDKQ8o”
*Ruth_A_Buzzi Easy Reader; Thunderbraille; Deaf Man’s Chest; The Bridge on the River Quiet; The Best Ears of our Lives #silentmovies

Ruth_A_Buzzi #funeralhomeslogans When taxes are the only remaining inevitable.

Ruth_A_Buzzi #funeralhomeslogans Option 13, take him back home minus the snoring.

Ruth_A_Buzzi #funeralhomeslogans At least Navy Seals aren’t dropping you in the water.

Ruth_A_Buzzi #funeralhomeslogans Formaldehyde or napalm, the kids decide.

Ruth_A_Buzzi #funeralhomeslogans Where the Bloods hang with the Crypts.

#myworstinvestment How to Read Braille, the video series.
*HappyTeacherLA @toughLoveforx @DianeRavitch waiting 4 edreformers 2 pass laws 2 jail prnts 4 not reading the prescribed minutes 2 their children at home.
*DianeRavitch RT: No high performing nation in world evaluates teacher quality by student test scores. None. tinyurl.com/44jegl8

Don’t forget to join the conversation on MiddleTalk and Twitter at #midleved this Friday at 8:00 pm EST.

Resources:

Multi-media in Education Report

http://www.edweek.org/ew/collections/multimediareport-2011/digitaledition-multimediareport2011.html?r=1130997812

77 Web Resouces to Explore this summer

The school year is either over or almost over for the majority of readers of Free Technology for Teachers. The summer is a good time to explore and experiment with new things that you might use in the fall. In the PDF below I’ve compiled 77 resources that you might want try out over the next couple of months. Even if there’s nothing new to you in it, please consider passing it along to a colleague that could discover a few new things from it.
http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2011/06/77-web-resources-for-teacher-to-explore.html

Stick Pick

A Corona teacher has developed a handheld-computer application to call on students randomly and ask them questions that are easy or hard enough for their current learning level.
http://www.pe.com/localnews/stories/PE_News_Local_D_wapp17.409d429.html
or
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/stick-pick/id436682059?mt=8

Succeeding with Science

http://www.succeedingwithscience.com/

OKAPI

Reading level and CBA (Curriculum Based Assessment) probes.
http://www.lefthandlogic.com/htmdocs/tools/okapi/okapi.php

Web Spotlight:

Summer Reading List for new teachers:

http://www.edutopia.org/groups/new-teacher-connections/52655

MichiganScience

By connecting to the new MichiganScience Facebook page you’ll have quicker access to science news from Michigan and across the country. Plus, there are the fun features, guest columnists (like Chuck Gaidica and PaleoJoe), book reviews and dazzling graphics you’ve come to expect. All you have to do is visit our MichiganScience fan page and click “like.” When we reach 1,200 fans, we’ll award one lucky fan with a new iPad 2.
http://www.facebook.com/MichiganScience

Events & Happenings:

Calendar of Events:

NMSA News:

      • Other News:
  • ISTE Eduverse Talks are the recorded sessions held on ISTE Island every week. Join ISTE in their Second Life conference location for their weekly talks on education.
    • The ISTE Special Interest Group:  Virtual Environments is holding meetings on Mondays from 4:00 – 6:00 pm (SLT) on ISTE Island.

Ohio Middle Level Association:



Michigan Association of Middle School Educators

  • Second Life:
    • Regular Tuesday meetings are scheduled. See the board on the ISTE Island for up to the minute details.  Check frequently this week as the ISTE Annual Convention is this week.
    • Video: Educational Uses of Second Life

 

advisory, Lesson Plan, MSM, News, Podcast, Web SpotlightBy Troy Patterson

MSM 168 Fight, Fight, Who’s on Twitter and who is right?

Jokes You Can Use:

A wife went to the police station with her next-door neighbor to report that her husband was missing. The policeman asked for a description. She said, “He’s 35 years old, 6 foot 4, has dark eyes, dark wavy hair, an athletic build, weighs 185 pounds, is soft-spoken, and is good to the children.” The next-door neighbor protested, “Your husband is 5 foot 4, chubby, bald, has a big mouth, and is mean to your children.” The wife replied, “Yes, but who wants HIM back?”

A husband was having great difficulty getting along with his wife – nothing but arguing and friction – so he decided to consult a marriage counselor. After they had talked for a while, the counselor said, “I suggest that you run five miles each day for a week. Then please call me back.”
A week later the counselor received a call from the husband, “Well,” asked the counselor, “how are things going with you and your wife?
“How should I know?” said the husband. “I’m thirty-five miles away.”

Lady, this vacuum cleaner will cut your work in half.
Good. I’ll take two of them.

Two ROBINS were lying on their backs, BASKING in the sun. A mama cat and her kitten were walking by. The kitten complained, ‘Mama, I’m so hungry, what can we eat?’ To which the mama cat, spying the two robins, replied,
How about some Baskin Robbins?’

A little girl was watching her parents dress for a party.
As her dad donned his tuxedo she warned, “Daddy, you shouldn’t wear that suit.”
“And why not, darling?” he asked.
“You know that it always gives you a headache the next morning.”

On Our Mind:

If you had $9,000 left in building PD, what would you choose to spend it on?

– Must be spent before the end of July.
– Must be approved by your building principal, School Improvement Committee, and perhaps Act of Congress.

Eileen Award

Janelle Rowe, newest member to the Diigo group.

Advisory:

What do you get when you combine Mythbusters, Tesla coils and Doctor Who? The answer is one charged-up performance.
ArcAttack is a performance art group that has rocked audiences with its custom-built Singing Tesla Coils since 2005. The plasma speakers produce musical tones by modulating spark output, a phenomenon that was featured in the Nicholas Cage film The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.
Adam Savage of Mythbusters fame took it to another level though at this year’s Maker Faire in the San Francisco Bay Area. In this YouTube video, Savage awkwardly dances to the tune of Doctor Who‘s iconic theme music while in a cage. The result is a performance that electrified the crowd (pun intended).
http://mashable.com/2011/05/25/adam-savage-doctor-who-tesla-coils/

Stats of the Union

If you have an interest in American demographics and statistics, you need to check out the Stats of the Union iPad app. Statistics are only useful when you have a clear way of organizing and viewing the data. Without being able to do that, you can’t glean any useful information from the numbers. What Stats of the Union does is take a host of data from the Community Health Status Indicators (CHSI) report and present it on an interactive, color-coded map.
Stats of the Union allows you to visualize any number of statistics for the entire country, all the way down to the county level. There are multiple subcategories in the seven prime categories including Summary, Demographics, Births, Deaths, At-Risk Groups, Diseases, and Risk Factors. For example, with a few taps I can see that in the county where I grew up (St. Louis County), life expectancy is 77.4 years, and population is 991,830. 20 percent of those people are at risk of health issues from smoking, and 102,548 people under the age of 65 (over 10 percent of the population) lack health insurance.
http://www.tuaw.com/2011/05/29/stats-of-the-union-brings-american-demographic-data-to-the-ipad

Middle School Science Minute

by Dave Bydlowski (k12science or davidbydlowski@mac.com)

Middle School Science Minute – Dissections and Dissection Apps.

From the Twitterverse:

*EDPressSec Justin Hamilton

@arneduncan: @DianeRavitch in denial & insulting hardworking teachers, principals & students proving her wrong every day me.lt/760ka

Note:  Arne Duncan’s verified account doesn’t follow a single teacher.
*

DianeRavitch Diane Ravitch

Having worked in the U.S. Dept of Education, I truly don’t understand why the Dept would use its resources to attack one person. Shameful.
*FlyontheCWall Find free grants for teachers and schools by searching by grade level, subject, or deadline.
*bethstill A great opportunity today to learn about ISTE Unplugged, Edubloggercon, and Bloggers’ Cafe at #iste11. Noon EST. bit.ly/9Du1vP
*web20classroom From @justintarte-10 Reasons To Get Educators Blogging:
*coolcatteacher I’m fully convinced inigma is the best QR code app http://www.i-nigma.com/i-nigmahp.html #qrcode
*HappyTeacherLA @toughLoveforx @DianeRavitch waiting 4 edreformers 2 pass laws 2 jail prnts 4 not reading the prescribed minutes 2 their children at home.
*bhsprincipal A Professional Development Design Concept (via @jimohagan) < Thoughts on Learning Spaces for Teachers? #edchat #cpchat
*Larryferlazzo The Best Rubric Sites (And A Beginning Discussion About Their Use)
*markgammon RT @armano: (good read) What College Degrees Are Really Worth #edu
Don’t forget to join the conversation on MiddleTalk and Twitter at #midleved this Friday at 8:00 pm EST.

News:

E-Book prices fuel outrage — and innovation

by Narasu Rebbapragada

An e-book that costs the same as a printed book doesn’t feel right. No trees died to make it. No heavy machinery ran to print it. No planes flew to ship it. You might need to buy one of those new $139 Barnes & Noble Nooks, announced this week, to be able to read it. So why should you have to spend as much as you would for a heavy hardcover book to own it?

http://www.macworld.com/article/160120/2011/05/ebook_prices_outrage_innovation.html

Resources:

Our school recently changed our school-wide referencing tool.

We have had a school wide referencing system in place for the past 6 or 7 years, we like many other Australian schools were a “Harvard referencing” school and we used a program called citation which was loaded on all the schools computers.

We shopped around for a few online referencing tools, looking at BibMe, Noodle Tools and EasyBib. We decided on Easybib and although it is a free product we opted to pay a small fee so that we could get APA referencing as an option for our students, which is similar to our previous Harvard system.

http://heyjude.wordpress.com/2011/05/31/essential-tools-using-easy-bib/

Merriam-Webster Dictionary now available on iPad for free

You could argue that there’s not much need for a separate dictionary app any more. With dictionary services built into nearly every interface and Google and Wikipedia searches just a tap away, it’s not hard to find out what a word means or how it’s spelled any more. But sometimes you may just want to browse around or look a word up for yourself, and for those times, there’s the Merriam-Webster Dictionary app, which is now available on the iPad for free.

Technology Integration Matrix

The Technology Integration Matrix (TIM) illustrates how teachers can use technology to enhance learning for K-12 students. The TIM incorporates five interdependent characteristics of meaningful learning environments: active, constructive, goal directed (i.e., reflective), authentic, and collaborative (Jonassen, Howland, Moore, & Marra, 2003). The TIM associates five levels of technology integration (i.e., entry, adoption, adaptation, infusion, and transformation) with each of the five characteristics of meaningful learning environments. Together, the five levels of technology integration and the five characteristics of meaningful learning environments create a matrix of 25 cells as illustrated below.

http://fcit.usf.edu/matrix/matrix.php

Zondle

This is zondle, where you can play games to support your learning!

http://www.zondle.com/publicPages/welcome.aspx

Books Should Be Free

Free audio book in mp3, iPod and iTunes.

http://www.booksshouldbefree.com/

Web Spotlight:

Waiting for a School Miracle

By DIANE RAVITCH

Teachers and principals have been fired and schools that were once fixtures in their community have been closed and replaced. In time, many of the new schools will close, too, unless they avoid enrolling low-performing students, like those who don’t read English or are homeless or have profound disabilities.

Teachers and principals have been fired and schools that were once fixtures in their community have been closed and replaced. In time, many of the new schools will close, too, unless they avoid enrolling low-performing students, like those who don’t read English or are homeless or have profound disabilities.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/01/opinion/01ravitch.html

TEDEd Calling for Submissions: Are you ready for TED?

by ANGELA MAIERS

As a huge fan of TED, I was thrilled to see the TED organization reaching out to follow educators in search of powerful content for educators created by educators.

TEDEd is launching a global search for new best of breed educational videos. They are inviting content submissions for 10 video series in the following catagories:

1. Math in real life

2. Creativity in Action

3. Inventions That Shaped History

4. How and Why?

5. Questions no one (yet) knows the answer to

6. Mindshifting stories

7. Playing with language

8. Same – and different

9. Things they don’t teach you in school

10. The five minute aha

http://www.angelamaiers.com/2011/05/are-you-ready-for-ted-teded-calling-for-submissions.html

Events & Happenings:

Calendar of Events:

NMSA News:

      • Other News:
  • ISTE Eduverse Talks are the recorded sessions held on ISTE Island every week. Join ISTE in their Second Life conference location for their weekly talks on education.
    • The ISTE Special Interest Group:  Virtual Environments is holding meetings on Mondays from 4:00 – 6:00 pm (SLT) on ISTE Island.

Ohio Middle Level Association:

Michigan Association of Middle School Educators

  • Second Life:
    • Regular Tuesday meetings are scheduled. See the board on the ISTE Island for up to the minute details.  Check frequently this week as the ISTE Annual Convention is this week.
    • Video: Educational Uses of Second Life

 

advisory, Lesson Plan, Strategy, Teaching Tip, Tech, Web SpotlightBy Troy Patterson

MSM 167 Fairly Infinite

Jokes You Can Use:

Why was the cat afraid of the tree?
Because of the tree bark. 

Guy: Haven’t I seen you someplace before?
Girl: Yes, that’s why I don’t go there anymore.

An Antartian ordered a pizza and the clerk asked if he should cut it in six or twelve pieces.
The Antartian replies, “Six, please. I could never eat twelve pieces.”

Five doctors went to on a duck hunt: a GP, a pediatrician, a psychiatrist, a surgeon, and a pathologist. After a while a bird came winging overhead, the GP raised his shogun but didn’t shoot because he wasn’t sure if it was a duck or not. The pediatrician also raised his gun, but then he wasn’t sure if it was a male or female duck, so he didn’t shoot. The psychiatrist raised his gun and then thought, I know that’s a duck, but does the duck know it’s a duck?” The surgeon was the only one who shot. Boom!! He blew it away. Then he turned to the pathologist and said, “Go see if that was a duck.”

Q. Why was the strawberry so sad?
A. His parent’s were in a jam.

On Our Mind:

The nuttiness of the end of the year.

Eileen Award

Carol Brown. Thanks for the thoughts.

Advisory:

Turn o Phrase

You can do a three before you sign in. This would be enough to show the students how it works. They could then create their own.
http://turn-o-phrase.appspot.com/

Sixty Second Lectures

Lectures in 60 seconds. (Warning: links to YouTube for videos).
http://www.sas.upenn.edu/home/news/sixtysec_lectures_archive.html

Middle School Science Minute

by Dave Bydlowski (k12science or davidbydlowski@mac.com)

You were both talking about measurement during the last podcast and then starting talking about units (thanks for the Bydlowski Unit).  I got to thinking about measurement in middle school science and its connection to the math curriculum.  In Michigan, we stop teaching measurement in grade 6 and it all becomes application.  I think it is a good idea for middle school teachers to check out the math curriculum on measurement so that they have a solid understanding of the knowledge that students have, coming into their classrooms.  Often, science teachers will say that their students can’t measure, but math teachers know they have been teaching a lot about measurement.

From the Twitterverse:

*missnoor28 Creating a Summer Reading Network by @edutopia #edtech #edchat 

RT @kylepace: RT @mmorley: 14 Steps to Meaningful Student Blogging #edtech #edchat
*rkiker http://newsmap.jp/ is like Wordle for the news – cool interactive news cloud!
*janellewilson One last time: an overview in photos of what a year in my classroom is like. animoto.com/play/0iwDUqHo3… #NASATweetup #scichat #edchat
*russeltarr Turn a work of literature into a boardgame #englishteacher: http://tinyurl.com/3p3ugjm
*jstepheng Comics in the Classroom: 100 Tips, Tools, and Resources for Teachers http://zite.to/mBsN4N via @Ziteapp
*drmmtatom RT @skipz: Five Historical Map Resources thx dougpete #ccstech 

FlipSnack: Turn a PDF into an embeddable Flash Flip Book http://tinyurl.com/3jx6mqa #ccstech
*russeltarr The 500 most recent “Fakebook” creations from teachers/students: http://tinyurl.com/3nlpzxs
*coolcatteacher Tons of apps on sale for memorial day weekend. – From AppAdvice.com: Popular iOS Apps And Games On Sale For… http://tumblr.com/xxh2pupmr4 

Qr code classroom implementation guide is approaching 200 tweets glad it is helpful. #edtech
*RT @mathonthemind: The new Common Core Math Standards in the US will have a writing portion. Students must explain their work. #mathchat
*DianeRavitch Works every time: push out low-performing kids. See scores and grad rates go up. A miracle! trib.in/lPyXdg
Don’t forget to join the conversation on MiddleTalk and Twitter at #midleved this Friday at 8:00 pm EST.

News:

Make My School a Prison

This is why I’m proposing to make my school a prison. The State of Michigan spends annually somewhere between $30,000 and $40,000 per prisoner, yet we are struggling to provide schools with $7,000 per student. I guess we need to treat our students like they are prisoners, with equal funding. Please give my students three meals a day. Please give my children access to free health care. Please provide my school district Internet access and computers. Please put books in my library. Please give my students a weight room so we can be big and strong. We provide all of these things to prisoners because they have constitutional rights. What about the rights of youth, our future?!
http://bigthink.com/ideas/38573?lolamericanpriorities

Film Depicts Hardships, Dedication of the ‘American Teacher’

By Anthony Rebora on May 25, 2011 1:24 PM
Researchers, policymakers, and parents tend to agree that effective teachers are the key to high-quality schools—and, by implication, to maintaining an educated and thriving citizenry. So why are teachers in the United States so undervalued and lately even disparaged?
Narrated by Matt Damon, “American Teacher” seeks to counteract popular misconceptions about the teaching profession…
But the film’s central theme is money.

http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/teaching_now/2011/05/the_struggles_of_the_american_teacher.html?cmp=ENL-TU-NEWS1

Strategy of the Week:

Put the Directions to the Side, Make the Learning Central

We’ve all heard about and experienced the Digital Natives’ ability to navigate the world of technology, and I am not going to contradict Marc Prensky’s enormously influential thesis in any way, but I do have an observation to make, as well as a suggestion (skip to the end if you just want the tip)!

1. Create a new document to be used as a template for students’ work.
2. Highlight specific points of the assignment where you feel the language load of the directions will be challenging for any/all of your students. From the Google Docs menu, select Insert>Comment.
3. Write step-by-step those areas of the assignment for which you anticipate students may need clarification (remember later the docs you have done this with, so that you can copy and paste procedures that are repeated across assignments)
4. Share the document with your students as “View Only” with the anticipation that they will need to make their own editable copy.

http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2011/05/put-directions-to-side-make-learning.html

Resources:

Flocabulary

We provide a free song from each of our titles in Vocabulary, Literature, Social Studies, Math and Science. You can find these samples by clicking on the subject heading above. We’ve produced videos for some of these songs. We’ve also created a handful of free songs and videos that don’t correspond to any particular album.
http://www.flocabulary.com/teacher_free_songs_videos.html

Tildee

Quick and easy way to create step by step directions. Allows for editing. Email address is needed to edit and create accounts. Directions can include Google Maps, Videos, and Images (and text, of course).
http://www.tildee.com/

Teach Handwriting

http://www.educationworld.com/a_curr/strategy/strategy057.shtml

Web Spotlight:

Computer Desktop Clutter Reveals Your Personality

Computer users with messy desktops are more likely to be liberal, educated city-dwellers who are career-minded and good at math, while those that keep their computer icons neat and tidy are more likely to be young tech-savvy suburbanites that say their personal life is more important than work. At least according to a new survey.
http://www.21stcenturyfluency.com/blogpost.cfm?blogID=1931

Myth of Bell to Bell teaching

Many teachers have been told to teach from bell to bell. Unfortunately, some teachers believe this means they must stand and deliver in front of the board for 50 minutes. Big mistake! In traditional urban schools, it is hard to keep students’ attention for even 5 minutes without them taking out their phone or simply daydreaming while acting like they are paying attention.
http://ascd.typepad.com/blog/2011/04/bell-to-bell-instruction-vs-golden-rule-of-15-minutes.html

Events & Happenings:

Calendar of Events:

NMSA News:

      • Other News:
  • ISTE Eduverse Talks are the recorded sessions held on ISTE Island every week. Join ISTE in their Second Life conference location for their weekly talks on education.
    • The ISTE Special Interest Group:  Virtual Environments is holding meetings on Mondays from 4:00 – 6:00 pm (SLT) on ISTE Island.

Ohio Middle Level Association:


Michigan Association of Middle School Educators

  • Second Life:
    • Regular Tuesday meetings are scheduled. See the board on the ISTE Island for up to the minute details.  Check frequently this week as the ISTE Annual Convention is this week.
    • Video: Educational Uses of Second Life

 

advisory, Lesson Plan, MSM, News, Strategy, Teaching Tip, Tech, Web SpotlightBy Troy Patterson

MSM 166: Tons of Advisory ideas, Measuring and more.

Jokes You Can Use:

A man was checking into a hotel when he saw a golden retriever sitting on a rug near the hotel elevator. Talking to the man behind the desk, he asked, “Does your dog bite?” The attendant said, “No, he doesn’t.” But as the man let his hand down to pat the dog, it bit his hand and held on so tightly that the man had to throw him across the room.

Returning to the desk, the man said, “I thought you said that your dog didn’t bite.” He directed the attendant’s attention to the dog, who now had returned to the rug. The attendant simply answered, “My friend that is NOT my dog.”

TEACHER: Desmond, your composition on “My Dog” is exactly the same as your brother’s. Did you copy his?
DESMOND: No, teacher, it’s the same dog!

Q: What do you call a woman that knows where her husband is 24/7?
A: A WIDOW!!!!!

Eileen Award

Tami Readinger, Thanks for the Twitter Follow!

Advisory:

Create a Unit of Measurement:  “We recently discussed a few unusual units of measurement, including the Wheaton (500,000 Twitter followers) and the milliHelen (the quantity of beauty required to launch a single ship). On the chalkboard of made-up measurements, there’s still plenty of room. So let’s invent some new ones!
Your fake units can measure anything: height, weight, time, the amount of energy required to do something, whatever.  We’ll award a copy of Split Decision to the person who coins our favorite new unit, and we’ll have other prizes for three runners-up. We’ll also start casually using your term in conversation. This might take off.”
http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/87272

Kinestic Challenge

  • You don’t have to be at a desk but you must be sitting.
  • While sitting at your desk make clockwise circles with your right foot.
  • While doing this, draw the number ” 6 ” in the air with your right hand.
  • Your foot will change direction.

Middle School Science Minute

by Dave Bydlowski (k12science or davidbydlowski@mac.com)

NASA Explorer School Program, since Shawn was asking about it on the last show.  NASA has changed the way they do these NES Schools, so it is much easier to participate.  Check it out at:  explorerschools.nasa.gov

From the Twitterverse:

*camlecolorado “Many parents failing to supervise kids on Facebook” SF Chronicle bit.ly/lS1ri9 via @Larryferlazzo
*jsmummert History sleuths, what the heck is this?
*
Larryferlazzo Larry Ferlazzo”Artificial Grammar Reveals Inborn Language Sense, Study Shows”
*bivey MT @SOSMarch: RT@EdReformPR “I teach, therefore I’ve lost sleep worrying about other people’s kids. <Man, that’s the truth!
*LogicalChoice Individualized Technology Plan Helps Student with Autism Achieve Learning Goals freetech4teachers.com/2011/05/indivi… #autism #edchat
*OCESS Did you know @NASA is giving space shuttle tiles to U.S. schools & universities until 5/23? http://go.nasa.gov/gpkYzD #edcampplano
*ColoradoHowe Please help contribute to a GDoc on World History online video clips at Great start so far! #sschat
*tombarrett One Question Surveys – Simple Surveys Chunky Results :: 1000+ Responses Each
Don’t forget to join the conversation on MiddleTalk and Twitter at #midleved this Friday at 8:00 pm EST.

News:

Textbook Pilot

We are pleased to announce that Nature Publishing Group will shortly be releasing Principles of Biology, an evidence-based textbook solution for today’s biology classrooms.
Principles of Biology is a high quality reinvention of the textbook, drawing on Nature Publishing Group’s ties into science research and reflecting the values of the education community.

  • More than 200 customizable peer-reviewed mini-chapters created by dozens of scientists, instructors, and editors
  • 75+ online interactive exercises to give students a hands-on way to apply their knowledge
  • 40+ Bioskills units teaching students real scientific skills, including data analysis
  • 2000+ assessment questions
  • Synopses and links to milestone research papers from Nature and other journals
  • Accessible on laptop, smartphone, or tablet
  • Affordably priced for all students

Principles of Biology covers all of the topics taught in majors introductory biology courses including chemistry, cells, genetics, evolution, biodiversity, plant physiology, animal physiology, and ecology.
We are looking for a small number of pilot partners to help us field test this resource during the 2011 fall semester.
http://www.nature.com/nature_education/biology.html

Walden University has expanded its MobileLearn service by releasing content through Apple’s iTunes U. The university’s new iTunes U page provides students with course content, experiential videos, highlights of Walden students, and a number of other resources for enhancing the student experience. When partaking in MobileLearn-enabled courses, students can access video and audio content from the classroom through iTunes, as well as save the content for offline access. In addition, the university also offers an iOS application that provides access to online classrooms, university messages, a Walden e-mail account, and student support services.
http://www.ipodnn.com/articles/11/05/12/ledet.updates.courses.for.ipad.integration

Strategy of the Week:

Addressing Bullying

Common Sense Media is dedicated to improving the lives of kids and families by providing the trustworthy information, education, and independent voice they need to thrive in a world of media and technology.
We exist because our nation’s children spend more time with media and digital activities than they do with their families or in school, which profoundly impacts their social, emotional, and physical development . As a non-partisan, not-for-profit organization, we provide trustworthy information and tools, as well as an independent forum, so that families can have a choice and a voice about the media they consume.

http://www.commonsensemedia.org/sample-lesson

Tips for Using Project Based Learning to Teach Math Standards

Let’s be honest. Designing PBL for Math can be a different beast. With the pressure of high-stakes testing and a packed curriculum, I often coach teachers who are nervous about giving time to a robust PBL project. In addition, because of the plethora of math standards, it can be difficult to choose the right learning target(s) for the project. Here are some tips for teachers designing individual Math PBL projects.
http://www.edutopia.org/blog/project-based-learning-math-standards

Resources:

National Jukebox

The Library of Congress presents the National Jukebox, which makes historical sound recordings available to the public free of charge. The Jukebox includes recordings from the extraordinary collections of the Library of Congress Packard Campus for Audio Visual Conservation and other contributing libraries and archives.
http://www.loc.gov/jukebox/

Anne Frank Virtual Tour

http://www.annefrank.org/en/Subsites/Home/Enter-the-3D-house/#/house/21/

Good Reads Makes Good Readers

So if you are here you read blogs, but do you read books too? Do your students? Mine didn’t. Not much anyway. Then about a month ago I read a book for teachers called The Book Whisperer by Donalyn Miller.
http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2011/05/goodreads-makes-great-readers.html
https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1qEV4Ht-aKZuYM8NF_bSLpKfSzMD41lPaLR6rLnHRAbg

Yong Zhao Learning
Famed Educational Expositor has a website with links to videos of his presentations on various educational topics.
http://zhaolearning.com/

Web Spotlight:

Book Writing

So you want to write a book. Well, why not? So does about 80 percent of the United States population according to a survey by the Jenkins Group.

  • 1/3 of high school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives.
  • 42 percent of college graduates never read another book after college.
  • 80 percent of U.S. families did not buy or read a book last year.
  • 70 percent of U.S. adults have not been in a bookstore in the last five years.
  • 57 percent of new books are not read to completion.
  • 70 percent of books published do not earn back their advance.
  • 70 percent of the books published do not make a profit.
    (Source: Jerold Jenkins, www.JenkinsGroupInc.com)
  • 53 percent read fiction, 43 percent read nonfiction. The favorite fiction category is mystery and suspense, at 19 percent.
  • 55 percent of fiction is bought by women, 45 percent by men.
  • (Source: Publishers Weekly)
  • About 120,000 books are published each year in the U.S.
  • (Source: www.bookwire.com)
  • A successful fiction book sells 5,000 copies.
  • A successful nonfiction book sells 7,500 copies.
  • (Source: Authors Guild, www.authorsguild.org)
  • On average, a bookstore browser spends 8 seconds looking at a book’s front cover and 15 seconds looking at the back cover.
  • (Source: Para Publishing, www.parapub.com)
  • Each day in the U.S., people spend 4 hours watching TV, 3 hours listening to the radio and 14 minutes reading magazines.
  • (Source: Veronis, Suhler & Associates investment banker)

http://www.fluency21.com/blogpost.cfm?blogID=1898

Across More Classes, Videos Make the Grade

Film students aren’t the only ones producing videos for homework these days.
http://chronicle.com/article/Across-More-Classes-Videos/127422

20 Questions That Will Make You a Better Person

Excellent students of life take the time to answer good questions.
Sit down with a piece of paper and play twenty questions with yourself.
http://coolcatteacher.blogspot.com/2011/05/20-questions-that-will-make-you-better.html

Events & Happenings:

Calendar of Events:

NMSA News:

      • Other News:
  • ISTE Eduverse Talks are the recorded sessions held on ISTE Island every week. Join ISTE in their Second Life conference location for their weekly talks on education.
    • The ISTE Special Interest Group:  Virtual Environments is holding meetings on Mondays from 4:00 – 6:00 pm (SLT) on ISTE Island.

Ohio Middle Level Association:


Michigan Association of Middle School Educators

  • Second Life:
    • Regular Tuesday meetings are scheduled. See the board on the ISTE Island for up to the minute details.  Check frequently this week as the ISTE Annual Convention is this week.
    • Video: Educational Uses of Second Life

 

advisory, Lesson Plan, MSM, News, Podcast, Strategy, Teaching Tip, Tech, Web SpotlightBy Troy Patterson

MSM 162-Yap away, yap away, yap away, Twitterland . . . o.O

Jokes You Can Use:
Sally was driving home from one of her business trips in Northern Arizona when she saw an elderly Navajo woman walking on the side of the road. As the trip was a long and quiet one, she stopped the car and asked the Navajo woman if she would like a ride. With a silent nod of thanks, the woman got into the car.
Resuming the journey, Sally tried in vain to make a bit of small talk with the Navajo woman. The old woman just sat silently, looking intently at everything she saw, studying every little detail, until she noticed a brown bag on the seat next to Sally.
‘What in bag?’ asked the old woman. Sally looked down at the brown bag and said, ‘It’s a bottle of sweet smelling cologne. I got it for my husband.’
The Navajo woman was silent for another moment or two. Then speaking with the quiet wisdom of an elder, she said, ‘Good trade.’

When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie
That’s amore.
When an eel bites your hand and that’s not what you planned
That’s a moray.
When our habits are strange and our customs deranged
That’s our mores.
When your horse munches straw and the bales total four
That’s some more hay.
When Othello’s poor wife, she gets stabbed with a knife
That’s a Moor, eh?
When a Japanese knight used a sword in a fight
That’s Sa…mur…ai.

One day my housework-challenged husband decided to wash his sweat-shirt. Seconds after he stepped into the laundry room, he shouted to me, “What setting do I use on the washing machine?”
“It depends,” I replied. “What does it say on your shirt?”
He yelled back, “University of Oklahoma.”

A man and his wife, now in their 60’s, were celebrating their 40th wedding anniversary. On their special day a good fairy came to them and said that because they had been so good that each one of them could have one wish.
The wife wished for a trip around the world with her husband. Whoosh! Immediately she had airline/cruise tickets in her hands.
The man wished for a female companion 30 years younger…
Whoosh…immediately he turned ninety!!!
Gotta love that fairy!

On Our Mind:

What have you gotten better at this year?
What do you still need to figure out or work on?
What’s keeping your kids from making big time gains (that are within our control)?
http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2011/03/30/three-good-questions-for-teachers-to-ask-themselves-answer-them-here-if-you-feel-like-it/

Eileen Award

Yvonne. Good luck with the interviews.

Advisory:

Create Claymation Public Service Announcements (Digmo)
If at first you don’t succeed . . .

Middle School Science Minute

by Dave Bydlowski (k12science or davidbydlowski@mac.com)

The World Traveler Dave is unavailable this week. We have hopes that he will return with his uber valuable contributions next week.

From the Twitterverse:

* shannonmmiller MapMaker Interactive – National Geographic Education http://ow.ly/4BEFX
* SuzanneWhisler RT @shannonmmiller Internet Safety Hangman….great review after internet safety lesson http://ow.ly/4BEAa (Free Tech for Teachers site)
* theresawhite RT @kylepace Apps for high school writing (PDF): #edtech #edapp
* web20classroom The Complete Educators Guide To Using Skype From @suewaters:
*DigMo Easy Claymation Animation Techniques: iStopmotion is one of the best (and easiest) animation application.. #edtech
*markbarnes19 Teachers nationwide criticized for Facebook usage http://www.mariettatimes.com/page/content.detail/id/535315/T… (cont) http://deck.ly/~Q2Mbs
*classblogs Twitter for #Teachers – Support Videos (via @tonnet)
*hasai 5 Failures Who Overcame the Odds digg.com/d361zob
*mguhlin Debunking 6 GoogleApps for Education Myths http://goo.gl/fb/pB4iB
*camlecolorado “@mountainteacher: The Complete Educator’s Guide to Using Skype effectively in the classroom bit.ly/ibcUTT”
*adamgolub @DianeRavitch Slogan: “You watch Channel One. We’ll clean up the scantron sheet.”
*BethRitterGuth RT @plugusin: Myths and Facts About the Impact of Technology on the Lives of American Teens. http://ow.ly/4yK41 #engchat
*lthumann Five Steps for Implementing a Successful 1:1 Environment | Edutopia diigo.com/0gmvm via @andycinek
*CarolJago Why metaphors matter http://tinyurl.com/3ppdddm by David Brooks.
*coolcatteacher MacdonaldTechForTeachers – iPad Apps for Education …cdonaldtechforteachers.wikispaces.com/iPad+Apps+for+…
11 Apr
*drmmtatom Brainstorming – Google Across the Curriculum #fhucid http://tinyurl.com/455ak6g

The Art and Science of Teaching #fhuedu610 http://tinyurl.com/3nc2en5

Some good reasons to go to school #fhuedu610 http://tinyurl.com/66kgha7
*Larryferlazzo “Microsoft Word Now Includes Squiggly Blue Line To Alert Writer When Word Is Too Advanced For Mainstream Audience” http://onion.com/h9W3eW
*bivey MT @ncarroll24 What Kids Say is the Biggest Obstacle 2 Tech @ Schl rww.to/eSeLzQ via @JenniferBarnett <They c mobile device potential.
*blairteach Nicely done. RT @SuzanneWhisler: Teaching with Technology in the Middle: Diigo for Digital Writing Reflection
#midleved Middle Level Ed Chat takes place in the Twitterverse on Fridays at 8:00 pm EST.  Please join in the conversation.

News:

Federal Budget’s Approval Sets Stage for Future Battles

By Alyson Klein
Education advocates are already bracing for protracted budget battles in the coming year, even as they sort the winners and losers in the bill approved by Congress on Thursday financing the U.S. Department of Education and the rest of the federal government through September.
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2011/04/14/28fedbudget.html?tkn=VTVFVlNU5PF7n5xlYXH4CSTsWTmv5Wgw15mr&cmp=ENL-EU-NEWS1

Resources:

Memidex

Memidex is a free online dictionary and thesaurus with a simple interface, complete inflections, auto-suggest, adult-filtering, frequent updates, a browsable index, support for mobile devices, and millions of external reference links for definitions, audio, and etymology. It’s fast too. Use the Find box for exact matching or browse using the complete index.
http://www.memidex.com/

SuperMaths

A variety of math games.
http://www.supermathsworld.com/

YapTime

A simple way to connect.
Teens don’t email. Grandparents don’t text. To keep connected simply create a group, invite members, post private messages, photos, videos, files and calendars — all one safe place.

http://yaptime.com/

Web Spotlight:

NASA releases sky-mapping archive

By Alicia Chang, Associated Press

NASA has released a trove of data from its sky-mapping mission, allowing scientists and anyone with access to the Internet to peruse millions of galaxies, stars, asteroids and other hard-to-see objects.
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/space/2011-04-15-nasa-sky-mapping-spacecraft.htm

Idioms 4 You

Idioms, um, for you.
http://www.idioms4you.com/index.html

CAST

A nonprofit leader in education, CAST works to improve learning opportunities and outcomes for all individuals through Universal Design for Learning. Explore this website to find out more about our research and development, innovative learning tools, and professional services.
http://cast.org

UDL Guidelines

The goal of education in the 21st century is not simply the mastery of content knowledge or use of new technologies. It is the mastery of the learning process. Education should help turn novice learners into expert learners—individuals who want to learn, who know how to learn strategically, and who, in their own highly individual and flexible ways, are well prepared for a lifetime of learning. Universal Design for Learning (UDL) helps educators meet this goal by providing a framework for understanding how to create curricula that meets the needs of all learners from the start.
The UDL Guidelines, an articulation of the UDL framework, can assist anyone who plans lessons/units of study or develops curricula (goals, methods, materials, and assessments) to reduce barriers, as well as optimize levels of challenge and support, to meet the needs of all learners from the start. They can also help educators identify the barriers found in existing curricula. However, to fully understand these Guidelines one must first understand what UDL is.
http://www.udlcenter.org/aboutudl/udlguidelines

Events & Happenings:

Calendar of Events:

NMSA News:

      • Other News:
  • ISTE Eduverse Talks are the recorded sessions held on ISTE Island every week. Join ISTE in their Second Life conference location for their weekly talks on education.
    • The ISTE Special Interest Group:  Virtual Environments is holding meetings on Mondays from 4:00 – 6:00 pm (SLT) on ISTE Island.

Ohio Middle Level Association:

Michigan Association of Middle School Educators

  • Second Life:
    • Regular Tuesday meetings are scheduled. See the board on the ISTE Island for up to the minute details.  Check frequently this week as the ISTE Annual Convention is this week.
    • Video: Educational Uses of Second Life
advisory, Lesson Plan, MSM, News, Podcast, Strategy, Teaching Tip, Tech, Web SpotlightBy Troy Patterson

MSM 161 Bad Jokes Abound, Update History, and Football!

Jokes You Can Use:

A teacher sees a lad entering the classroom – his hands were dirty.
She stopped him and said, “John, please wash your hands. My goodness, what would you say if I came into the room with hands like that?”
Smiling the boy replied, “I think I’d be too polite to mention it.”

Two explorers, camped in the heart of the African jungle, were discussing their expedition. “I came here,” said one, “because the urge to travel was in my blood. City life bored me, and the smell of exhaust fumes on the highways made me sick. I wanted to see the sunrise over new horizons and hear the flutter of birds that never had been seen by man. I wanted to leave my footprints on sand unmarked before I came. In short, I wanted to see nature in the raw. What about you?” “I came,” the second man replied, “because my son was taking saxophone lessons.”

So the bus driver said to the string, “Are you a string?” and the string said, “No, I’m afraid not”. (A frayed knot).

On Our Mind:

NMSA Executive Director Search
NMSA Elections:  Vote Early, Vote Often

Eileen Award

Eileen!

We heard from Eileen this week!  The free hugs are on!

Advisory:

Overcoming Challenges:

The true story of the Panyee Football Club. Video is 5 minutes and 15 seconds long- subtitles in English.
*Notes (explain football (soccer), pitch (field), boots (shoes).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jU4oA3kkAWU&

Get Your Day off to a better Start

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/04/110404151353.htm

Daily Pictures

Pictures from around the world.
http://blogs.sacbee.com/photos/2011/04/images-of-daily-life-around-th.html

Middle School Science Minute

by Dave Bydlowski (k12science or davidbydlowski@mac.com)

The Middle School Chemistry Project can be found at middleschoolscience.com.  By the way, did it on the iPad again.  First time I used three tracks.  One for voice, one for guitar and one for stand up bass.  Good show this week, as always.  I enjoyed the interview with Doc Tatom.

From the Twitterverse:

**kelalford Web 2.0 Tools That Will Inspire via DEN Blog Network – Spring has Arrived!! Let’s talk about some Web 2.0 … http://tinyurl.com/3e47zkq
* bivey MT @ncarroll24 What Kids Say is the Biggest Obstacle 2 Tech @ Schl rww.to/eSeLzQ via @JenniferBarnett <They c mobile device potential.
*middleweb CoSN and NEA Foundation offering $1000 prizes for best ideas about “teaching with mobiles”. Thru 5/13.
*ckeech RT“@web20classroom: Using QR Codes In Student Projects: bit.ly/i2SbrE”@dremmy7431
*drmmtatom “First iPad Magazine For Kids” Makes Its Debut [VIDEO] http://on.mash.to/e4pt0Y #ccstech
**russeltarr Accept Defeat: The Neuroscience of Screwing Up: http://tinyurl.com/ye3lc6h
*
DianeRavitch Diane Ravitch
Why not rate doctors by how many patients die? That way, no one would practice critical care or become cardiac surgeons. Lesson for ed eval.

How about if we close down Fire Departments if there are too many fires in their neighborhood?

I have suggested Congress should pass a law that within 12 years every city should be crime-free. Close down Police Dept if they are not.
**SpeechTechie Ending @GlogsterEDU week with Gaggle of Glog examples, ideas for SLP applications!! Glogs for PD, social, cplx categ
**MyMathCloud Since the mathematicians have invaded the theory of relativity, I do not understand it myself any more. Albert Einstein
**Ron_Peck Office Templates for Teachers ~ #edtech
**jybuell The CST for 8th grade social studies appears to copied entirely from Trivial Pursuit cards. U should get pie pieces instead of a score.
**RigorRelevance RT @jimwarford: Skype launches social network for teachers worldwide http://sbne.ws/r/78hR
**hrheingold My blog/video of @angelamaiers on new media literacies now up at DMLcentral! http://goo.gl/5XVX5
**russeltarr Back to School: Top 10 iPhone Apps for Students: http://tinyurl.com/kojx2q
**DanielPink This month’s Sunday Telegraph column: Don’t incentivize teachers. Overpay them. (No, really.) telegraph.co.uk/finance/busine…
**drmmtatom RT @nancyrubin: Screencasting: A 21st Century Teaching Tool community.learningobjects.com/Users/Nancy.Ru… via @AddThis #fhucid



News:

No Dentist Left Behind

http://www.trelease-on-reading.com/no-dentist.html

Cell Phones and Privacy Risks

http://dearbornschools.org/dtube?v=949NN4oT8MmHj&Itemid=333

Resources:

Google Bloomin’

Google Tools to support the revised Bloom’s Taxonomy
http://kathyschrock.net/googleblooms/
https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0Anw3Hl3DL4wfdG9WR3JQZjJXNFZFcE5pLWhrZEVNU1E&hl=en&authkey=CIf9_uoC# ‘

Civil War Timeline

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/10/29/opinion/20101029-civil-war.html

Civil War 150 years later

http://hosted.ap.org/specials/interactives/_national/civil-war-anniversary/index.html?SITE=AP

Rolls Off the Tongue

http://rollsoffthetongue.tumblr.com/

GeoGames

http://reachtheworld.org/geogames/index.html

Wicked Science Interactives

http://www.wicked.org.nz/r/wick_ed/interactives/science.php

Web Spotlight:

Demographic Chart Book

Provides a wide-ranging audience of persons interested in American history – including historians, other social scientists, teachers, and students – with graphics portraying the demographic history of the United States, as shown by the decennial census of population.
http://www.demographicchartbook.com/Chartbook/

Story Boarding

The more we podcast and have our students create video clips or other digital storytelling projects, the more we need to teach storyboarding as part of the process. Being able to pre-visualize how your story will unfold is becoming a vital skill to have for storytellers.
http://langwitches.org/blog/2011/04/03/storyboarding-pre-writing-activity/

Events & Happenings:

Calendar of Events:

NMSA News:

      • Other News:
  • ISTE Eduverse Talks are the recorded sessions held on ISTE Island every week. Join ISTE in their Second Life conference location for their weekly talks on education.
    • The ISTE Special Interest Group:  Virtual Environments is holding meetings on Mondays from 4:00 – 6:00 pm (SLT) on ISTE Island.

Ohio Middle Level Association:

Michigan Association of Middle School Educators

  • Second Life:
    • Regular Tuesday meetings are scheduled. See the board on the ISTE Island for up to the minute details.  Check frequently this week as the ISTE Annual Convention is this week.
    • Video: Educational Uses of Second Life

 

advisory, Conferences, Lesson Plan, MSM, News, Podcast, Tech, Web SpotlightBy Troy Patterson

MSM 158 MAMSE, DropBox, Latin, and Facebook!

Jokes You Can Use:

A man wrote a letter to the IRS: “I have been unable to sleep knowing that I have cheated on my income tax. I understated my taxable income and have enclosed a check for $200.00. If I still can’t sleep, I will send the rest.”

THE CAT:
One day, a cat dies of natural causes and goes to heaven, where he meets the Lord Himself.
The Lord says to the cat, “You lived a good life, and if there is any way I can make your stay in heaven more comfortable, please let me know.”
The cat thinks for a moment and says, “Lord, all my life I have lived with a poor family and had to sleep on a hard wooden floor.”
The Lord stops the cat and says, “Say no more,” and a wonderful, fluffy pillow appears.
A few days later, six mice are killed in a tragic farming accident, and all of them go to heaven.
Again, the Lord is there to greet them with the same offer.
The mice answer, “All our lives we have been chased.
We have had to run from cats, dogs, and even women with brooms.
Running, running, running; we’re tired of running.
Do you think we could have roller skates so that we don’t have to run anymore?”
The Lord says, “Say no more” and fits each mouse with beautiful new roller skates.
Week later, the Lord stops by to see the cat and finds him snoozing on the pillow.
The Lord gently wakes the cat and asks him, “How are things since you got here?”
The cat stretches and yawns, then replies, “It is wonderful here.
Better than I could have ever expected. And those ‘Meals On Wheels’ you’ve been sending by are the best!”

On Our Mind:

MAMSE

Troy gets an Award and a Surprise!
Competition with MACUL
Great folks at Coopersville Middle School
Congrats on being recognized as a National Schools to Watch school.

Eileen Award

Robert Jackson

Advisory:

Latin motto generator: My younger students had great fun with this when designing Medieval Shields –

Middle School Science Minute

by Dave Bydlowski (k12science or davidbydlowski@mac.com)

April EarthKAM project for MS students utilizing the International Space Station.  Pretty cool 🙂

From the Twitterverse:

*russeltarr Latin motto generator: My younger students had great fun with this when designing Medieval Shields –
*Frankwspencer Why Arguing Improves Students’ Reasoning Skills healthland.time.com/2011/03/17/why… via @TIMEHealthland
*OCESS Applications for Stanford’s Middle School Teachers’ Summer Program in Nanotechnology (July 19-23) due 5/1. http://cot.ag/cHlFKr @egfi
*theresawhite RT @local4news: This just in! judge has given Emergency Financial Manager academic control of #Detroit Public Schools:
*willrich45 Donate your 1G iPad to a school in need: Nice idea.
*rmbyrne RT @shannonmmiller: How to create a Digital Publishing Culture…creating ePubs with students http://ow.ly/4hOVH
*kconners09 Why #geography education matters. http://ow.ly/1scl8R #sschat #edchat Amazing short vid on population.
*missnoor28 RT @kbkonnected: FaxZero – free internet faxing http://goo.gl/fb/UHDSe by @daveandcori #edtech #edchat
*DianeRavitch Is subjectivity a problem in evaluation? http://shankerblog.org/?p=2170
*kevcreutz Ice Breaker Tags – Creative Name Tags via @rmbyrne #edtech
*marinmacteacher SnipSnip.it – Share a clip of a Youtube Video by start/end time:
*ktenkely ktenkely
I’ve come to realize that standardized tests serve mostly to make dreadful forms of teaching appear successful. -Kohn http://j.mp/hvTMCf
*CoachB0066 10 Great websites for principals via ISTE #cpchat
*NCMSA Over 45 presentations now posted on the wiki!!! Still plenty of time to have your #NCMSA11 posted. Directions at .

News:

 

Feds requiring principals to monitor students’ Facebook and other social media during lunch times and after school.

http://dailycaller.com/2011/03/16/fed-instructs-teachers-to-facebook-creep-students/

“Education Department officials are threatening school principals with lawsuits if they fail to monitor and curb students’ lunchtime chat and evening Facebook time for expressing ideas and words that are deemed by Washington special-interest groups to be harassment of some students.”

School of One

“The School of One is based on the premise that, in a regular school, … there are basically three or four math classes that are going on in any given period,” explains Christopher Rush, the program’s co-founder and chief product officer, who is in charge of the project’s analytics. “So why don’t we take all the kids from those math classes, and all of the teachers from those math classes, and try to use those resources more strategically?”
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2011/03/17/25schoolofone.h30.html

Resources:

TimeToast

Easy to create timelines. Free
http://www.timetoast.com/

Urli.st

Create and share a list of links.
http://urli.st/

Web Spotlight:

Adults with college degrees.
http://chronicle.com/article/Adults-With-College-Degrees-in/125995

Events & Happenings:

Calendar of Events:

NMSA News:

      • Other News:
  • ISTE Eduverse Talks are the recorded sessions held on ISTE Island every week. Join ISTE in their Second Life conference location for their weekly talks on education.
    • The ISTE Special Interest Group:  Virtual Environments is holding meetings on Mondays from 4:00 – 6:00 pm (SLT) on ISTE Island.
  • The Ohio Middle Level Association will hold their annual conference February 17 – 18, 2011 at The Easton in Columbus, OH.
  • Second Life:
    • Regular Tuesday meetings are scheduled. See the board on the ISTE Island for up to the minute details.  Check frequently this week as the ISTE Annual Convention is this week.
    • Video: Educational Uses of Second Life

Contact Us:

Call Us at (262) 724-6653 (Google Voice)

Diigo Group:  http://groups.diigo.com/group/middle-school-matters

email:  middleschooleducators@gmail.com

Twitter:  @MSMatters

Facebook:  http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Middle-School-Matters/348279537549

advisory, MSM, News, Podcast, Teaching Tip, Tech, Web SpotlightBy Troy Patterson

MSM 157 Call, Nuts, Failures, Tools and More!

Jokes You Can Use:

Bus Tour

A tour bus driver drives with a bus full of seniors down a highway, when a little old lady taps him on his shoulder. She offers him a handful of almonds, which he gratefully munches up.
After approx.15 minutes, she taps him on his shoulder again and she hands him another handful of almonds. She repeats this gesture about eight times.
At the ninth time he asks the little old lady why they don’t eat the almonds themselves, whereupon she replies that it is not possible because of their old teeth, they are not able to chew them. “Why do you buy them then?” he asks puzzled. Whereupon the old lady Answers, “We just love the chocolate around them.”

The Elevator

An Antartian boy and his father were visiting a mall. They were amazed by almost everything they saw, but especially by two shiny, silver walls that could move apart and back together again.
The boy asked his father, “What is this, Father?” The father [never having seen an elevator] responded “Son, I have never seen anything like this in my life, I don’t know what it is.”
While the boy and his father were watching wide-eyed, an old lady in a wheel chair rolled up to the moving walls and pressed a button. The walls opened and the lady rolled between them into a small room.
The walls closed and the boy and his father watched small circles of lights with numbers above the walls light up. They continued to watch the circles light up in the reverse direction.
The walls opened up again and a beautiful 24-year-old woman stepped out. The father said to his son, “Go get your mother.”

On Our Mind:

Google Phone:  A Call from Dr. Tatom

Eileen Award

To Robert in Ukraine

From our Listeners:
Hey guys,

I saw on this week’s podcast notes that someone was talking about screenjelly.  I love using screen casts to communicate with staff and parents, so I am always on the look out for the next best thing.  However, if your school is like mine, then the firewall might prevent using screentoaster or screenjelly.  I did, however, find a great java based site called screencast-o-matic.

http://www.screencast-o-matic.com/

It works well even through the firewalls.

Robert in Ukraine

Advisory:

Share childhood differences:
For the fun of it, I also listed in my notes some of the elements of my own pre-Internet childhood that I suspect most children today are not experiencing because of the Internet, video games, texting, etc. I decided to post some of them here for your enjoyment.

  • Remember when childhood happened almost exclusively outside?
  • Remember when a child’s most important resource was a saw, hammer, and bag straightened nails?
  • Remember when we daydreamed about building a raft, putting a propeller & wings on our bicycle, or exploring a wilderness with a musket and bowie knife?
  • Remember when there was more you could do with a pair of skates than just strap them on your feet and skate?
  • Remember when we use to pretend — out loud?
  • Remember when every tree was scrutinized for its treehouse suitability?
  • Remember when playing house was done with chairs and blankets (not with simulation software)?

http://davidwarlick.com/2cents/?p=2943

Middle School Science Minute

by Dave Bydlowski (k12science or davidbydlowski@mac.com)

Celebrating 20 years:
National Middle Level Science Teachers Association

From the Twitterverse:

*KentManning RT @mgmitchell: Boys can’t write? Just give them a forum
*bhsprincipal RT @gcouros: RT @snbeach: Common Core disconnect: #bhsc hat #edchat
*ddoherty24 Educate students on deleting cyber-bullying www.onguardonline.gov
*ctrlzee The problem with buying a used iPad is that you know it’s spent as much time in the bathroom as the person you’re buying it from.
*gazelle_com Those upgrading to iPad 2, are you going online or in line? Sell your used iPad and other gadgets to offset costs http://ow.ly/4cxYN #ipad2
*elemenous Excellent school project that utilized iPads and shows the potential of mobile learning. http://tinyurl.com/6f9cfd6 Hat tip to @westleyf!
*Ron_Peck Free Map Tools ~ #geography #sschat #historyteacher
*DianeRavitch Required reading http://zhaolearning.com/
*drmmtatom RT @elenischool: Great resources for teachers. #ccstech #fhuedu610 @MSMatters
*vbek Woz to educators: “be brave, use the new technology”
*CoSN Access educational content from #CoSN11 online with Live Learning Center; learn more: http://ow.ly/49snn
*tombarrett Twitter Dots – Beautiful map rendering of realtime #Twitter tweets #maps #mashups
*rmbyrne Google A-Z – Google Docs – http://goo.gl/Yp8g

News:

Pay Initiative does NOT Lead to Increased Student Performance:

New York City’s heralded $75 million experiment in teacher incentive pay — deemed “transcendent” when it was announced in 2007 — did not increase student achievement at all, a new study by the Harvard economist Roland Fryer concludes.
“If anything,” Fryer writes of schools that participated in the program, “student achievement declined.” Fryer and his team used state math and English test scores as the main indicator of academic achievement.
http://gothamschools.org/2011/03/07/study-75m-teacher-pay-initiative-did-not-improve-achievement/

ISTE Voting is now open

http://iste-listserver.iste.org/t/446353/2089440/2518/0/

82% of schools could soon be labeled as “Failing”
More than three-quarters of the nation’s public schools could soon be labeled “failing” under the federal No Child Left Behind Act, the Obama administration said Wednesday as it increased efforts to revamp the signature education initiative of President George W. Bush.
“This law is fundamentally broken, and we need to fix it, and fix it this year,” Duncan told the House Committee on Education and the Workforce. “The law has created dozens of ways for schools to fail and very few ways to help them succeed. We should get out of the business of labeling schools as failures and create a new law that is fair and flexible and focused on the schools and students most at risk.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/03/09/AR2011030903089.html?hpid=moreheadlines

Resources:

Diagramly

Easy to use web based diagraming. Just drag the element (shape, text, image, etc) into the working area. Click on the triangle on an image to add text. Clicking save will allow you to download the image in a number of formats (the default is .xml, but you can also use .jpg or more).
http://www.diagram.ly/

Museum Box

Welcome to Museum Box, This site provides the tools for you to build up an argument or description of an event, person or historical period by placing items in a virtual box. What items, for example, would you put in a box to describe your life; the life of a Victorian Servant or Roman soldier; or to show that slavery was wrong and unnecessary? You can display anything from a text file to a movie. You can also view and comment on the museum boxes submitted by others.
http://museumbox.e2bn.org/index.php

Molecular Workbench

The Molecular Workbench™ (MW) is a free, open-source tool that creates and             delivers visual, interactive simulations for teaching and learning science and engineering.
http://mw.concord.org/modeler/index.html

Corkboard ME

Welcome to your own personal cork board. You’ve been given a special link — bookmark this page.  Click to write a note, click-and-hold to move around. Paste an image link and see what happens? Enjoy!
http://corkboard.me/

Pilot Handwriting

Interesting way to create a font of your handwriting. However, you send email through them.
http://pilothandwriting.com/en/

Comic Strip Generator

Use to use and flexible. The tutorial gives a good overview and tips.
http://stripgenerator.com/strip/create/
Tutorial: http://stripgenerator.com/video/show/1/ (5 minute, 36 seconds)

Web Spotlight:

Code for America

Working with city managers, we help to identify projects that can benefit from web-based solutions. Code for America recruits both the development teams and the participating cities through competitive application processes. Once identified and funded, each city project is connected with a web development team that can further scope the project, develop an action plan, and deliver an appropriate solution over an 11-month development cycle. Throughout the development cycle, CFA mentors, trains, and coordinates the teams and facilitates their relationships with their city management clients.
The applications that Code for America fellows build fit a certain model: 1) They are web applications – think Facebook, Yelp, Zillow, or Picnik; 2) They will enable cities to connect with their constituents in ways that reduce administrative costs and engage citizens more effectively; 3) They support the move toward transparency and collaboration; 4) and finally, they are shareable – which means that an application built for one city can be used by any other city.
Fundamentally, it’s all about helping American cities use web technology to do a better job of providing services to citizens.
As the program continues, we will host a suite of web applications all cities can use, fostering the adoption of CFA and outside open source projects by cities across the country and around the world.

Code for America isn’t just a way to offer city governments technical talent at less than market rates. Beyond just the projects our fellows build, the program is designed to:
Cultivate the next generation of public sector technology leaders.
Up to 60% of the municipal workforce in many cities will retire in the next five years. This represents not only a crisis of talent, but also a huge opportunity. Think how much can change if we fill those positions with people who have a native understanding of how technology can work in modern urban life.
Inject a culture virus into city government.
We recruit fellows who demonstrate a networked, web-centric and open approach to problem-solving. Attaching the fellows to the city for the year and helping them build relationships with a wide variety of city workers is an effective way to introduce this kind of thinking and help it spread
Encourage experimentation.
The fellows will be available for side projects in the city that would be difficult to move forward through standard channels. The city leadership and the fellows can function as an ad hoc innovation team, collaborating on a series of interesting experiments throughout the year, all of which will be shared with the other cities.
Change the tool set.
Part of the job of the fellows will be to help introduce lightweight, simple technology that can help with internal functions. These small changes can have large lasting effects.
Facilitate collaboration with other cities.
Code for America is building a network of city leaders who believe there is a better way of doing things, and the program involves both formal and informal channels to share ideas and lessons learned. We’re also working more robust channels for sharing applications and setting technology standards across cities.
http://codeforamerica.org

TED Talk – Khan Academy

http://www.ted.com/talks/salman_khan_let_s_use_video_to_reinvent_education.html

Tech Opportunity
Glogster is looking for “ambassadors”.  You get additional resources and a full Glogster account in exchange for your time and use of the Glogster accounts.
http://edu.glogster.com/ambassadors/#newAmbassadorEmail

Events & Happenings:

Calendar of Events:

NMSA News:

      • Other News:
  • ISTE Eduverse Talks are the recorded sessions held on ISTE Island every week. Join ISTE in their Second Life conference location for their weekly talks on education.
    • The ISTE Special Interest Group:  Virtual Environments is holding meetings on Mondays from 4:00 – 6:00 pm (SLT) on ISTE Island.
  • The Ohio Middle Level Association will hold their annual conference February 17 – 18, 2011 at The Easton in Columbus, OH.
  • Second Life:
    • Regular Tuesday meetings are scheduled. See the board on the ISTE Island for up to the minute details.  Check frequently this week as the ISTE Annual Convention is this week.
    • Video: Educational Uses of Second Life
advisory, MSM, News, Podcast, Strategy, Teaching Tip, Tech, Web SpotlightBy Troy Patterson

MSM 156 Tons of Advisory Ideas, Bullying, & PD for you!

Jokes You Can Use:

Rules of Life:

1. Never, under any circumstances, take a sleeping pill and a laxative on the same night.
2. Don’t worry about what people think, they don’t do it very often.
3. Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian anymore than standing in a garage makes you a car.
4. Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity.
5. If you must choose between two evils, pick the one you’ve never tried before.
6. My idea of housework is to sweep the room with a glance.
7. Not one shred of evidence supports the notion that life is serious.
8. A person who is nice to you but rude to the waiter, is not a nice person.
9. For every action, there is an equal and opposite government program.
10. If you look like your passport picture, you probably need the trip.
11. Bills travel through the mail at twice the speed of checks.
12. A conscience is what hurts when all of your other parts feel so good.
13. Eat well, stay fit, die anyway.
1 4. Men are from earth. Women are from earth. Deal with it.
15. No man has ever been shot while doing the dishes.
16. A balanced diet is a muffin in each hand.
17. Middle age is when broadness of the mind and narrowness of the waist change places.
18. Opportunities always look bigger going than coming.
19. Junk is something you’ve kept for years and throw away three weeks before you need it.
20. There is always one more imbecile than you counted on.
21. Experience is a wonderful thing. It enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again.
22. By the time you can make ends meet, they move the ends.
23. Thou shalt not weigh more than thy refrigerator.
24. Someone who thinks logically provides nice contrast to the real world.
25. It ain’t the jeans that make your butt look fat.
26. If you had to identify in one word the reason why the human race has not achieved it’s full potential, that word would be ‘meetings’.
27. There is a very fine line between ‘hobby’ and ‘mental illness.’
28. People who want to share their religious views with you almost never want you to share yours with them.
29. You should not confuse your career with your life.
30. Nobody cares if you can’t dance well. Just get up and dance.
31. Never lick a steak knife.
32. The most destructive force in the universe is gossip.
33. You will never find anybody who can give you a clear and compelling reason why we observe daylight savings time.
34. You should never say anything to a woman that even remotely suggests that you think she’s pregnant unless you can see an actual baby emerging from her at that moment.
35. The one thing that unites all human beings, regardless of age, gender, religion, economic status or ethnic background, is that deep down inside we ALL believe we are good drivers.
36. Your friends love you anyway.

From our Listeners:

This is Eric in Chicago, I haven’t commented in awhile but I still listen faithfully to the podcast and seems to find equal parts enjoyment and information.  So thanks for keeping it going.

On another note.  I was thinking about attending the Michigan Middle school conference.  I am 50/50 right now.  It would be a nice time away learning and hanging with others who do this…so close the deal and talk me into it. 🙂  Is it worth the drive from Chicago?  What will I get from it?

Talk with you soon.

Peace. eric

Eileen Award

Karen Richmond (via iTunes).

Advisory:

The AIR Car:
Meet the Air Pod. Its manufacturers think it could be the future of urban transport. 3 minutes and 30 second video on clean emission car (starts with a commercial first though).
http://www.cnn.com/video/?/video/tech/2010/12/10/ctw.anderson.air.car.cnn

Common Good Forecaster

Those who advocate for greater investment in education often make the economic argument: more education leads to higher wages and is critical for financial stability and independence. They’re right. Robust evidence supports the view that higher levels of educational attainment are linked to higher incomes, less unemployment, less poverty, and less reliance on public assistance.
http://www.measureofamerica.org/forecaster

Read Across America

Pledge to Read
http://readacrossamerica.org/

Internet “Privacy”

Here’s a resource for teaching your students about privacy settings and disclosing personal information on the internet through social networking sites.  This lesson focuses on Facebook, but good advice for the internet in general.  http://classroomtalk.com/?p=318

Middle School Science Minute

by Dave Bydlowski (k12science or davidbydlowski@mac.com)

Periodic Table- A humorous review
and
International Year of Chemistry

From the Twitterverse:

*dansta RT @opensesamenow Part 1: Creating a Social Learning Environment | OpenSesame
*mcleod CASTLE blog post: Virtual Schooling In The News
*Larryferlazzo RT @PearsonLongman: Pearson Longman USA ESL/EFL daily is out! ▸ Top stories today via @marisa_c
*web20classroom RT @timbuckteeth: Using http://www.jamstudio.com to create music, mix audio and create sounds #saltash11
*ScrivenerApp Scrivener for Windows and Linux beta 1.9 is now available! Lee’s forum thread and main webpage 🙂
*GlogsterEDU RT @kylepace Glogopedia – example Glogs from GlogsterEDU: – Would rec spending time here discussing design w/students. 

mbteach Mary Beth Hertz Hearing how @joycevalenza‘s students created more than one Glog and linked them to create more facets to the tool. #tmnj11
*russeltarr How to do research: A great site for classroom use!: http://tinyurl.com/m2hdwd
*tombarrett Our Tudor song – class10jd’s posterous #classblogs
*jennymacant Currently reading http://n.pr/fOQhxd
*tonitones Learning about ePub. Any doc on a Mac just hit export and then ePub to turn into an iBook also dotepub.com for webpages #als2011
*hrheingold #mindamp Recording of tonight’s live session — link also in forum.  (Use the link in the forum)
*MHEducation Did you know that Everyday Math, which became the 1st CCSS math prgram in Aug 2010, now has several supporting iPad apps? http://ow.ly/489Va
*bethstill Just made my first screencast using ScreenJelly. My tutorial was on how to create a hyperlink in a GoogleSite.  http://www.screenjelly.com/
*hrheingold 1998 — the art of hosting good conversations online http://www.rheingold.com/texts/artonlinehost.html
*shannonmmiller Shannon Miller
diipo….Education 2.0 social network for your class http://ow.ly/42mv1
*CaliLewis Fun facts about YouTube, and how to check Facebook and Twitter via email (yes, even at work or school) http://webbeat.tv/67
*BratBusters Bullying Reporting Website http://bratbusters.com/bullying-reporting-website/ #bullying
* schoolwise Carol A. Josel & drmmtatom Monte Tatom
Why America’s teachers are enraged – #cnn
*maggiecary Great Post for Teens: No Such Thing as Privacy on facebook:
*SmartStorming A man flattened by an opponent can get up again. A man flattened by conformity stays down for good.— Thomas J. Watson, Jr. #creativity

 

Resources:

Walk a Mile in Their Shoes

This is a great pdf document that spotlights bullying of special needs students.
Parents should familiarize themselves with the different forms of bullying that a child with special needs may experience:
MANIPULATIVE BULLYING: This form of bullying occurs when a child with special needs is actually being coerced and controlled by another student.
CONDITIONAL FrIENDShIP: This form of bullying occurs when a child thinks that someone is being their friend, but the times of “friendship” are alternated with times of bullying.
ExPLOITATIVE BULLYING: This form of bullying occurs when the features of the child’s condition are used to bully them either by other classmates or via technology and social media networks.
http://www.abilitypath.org/areas-of-development/learning–schools/bullying/articles/walk-a-mile-in-their-shoes.pdf

The Generation Project

  • Each gift donated through The Generation Project will be widely advertised to students, teachers, and principals. Interested individuals need only to meet application requirements to be considered for the gift. This self-selection will ensure that the gifts are being utilized by interested individuals. The Generation Project will also follow-up with recipients to ensure gifts are being used as intended.

 

And if you’re worried that the gift you design might be too esoteric and might not meet the needs of real-life students…fear not. Educators can always apply for your gift with a proposed “modification” to fit the needs of their students. A teacher, for example, might ask to purchase slightly different materials than you had envisioned, or to implement your vision in a more grade-appropriate way. So even if it turns out you miscalculated when you offered to fund the purchase of a hundred copies of V.M. Zubok’s A Failed Empire: The Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin to Gorbachev for a second grade classroom, a second grade teacher might suggest that your gift be used to purchase the Dr. Seuss Cold War analogy The Butter Battle Book–fulfilling your desire to help second-graders learn about the Cold War.

Of course, any proposed modification is subject to your approval as a donor. This is your gift, and we won’t release any funds until you give your go-ahead.

  • To cover the overhead costs associated with implementing gifts in low-income schools, The Generation Project charges an implementation fee totaling 13.5% of your Gift amount. Our 13.5% overhead cost makes us one of the most efficient charities in the nation. See Charity Navigator for more information. To procure start-up funding, The Generation Project is actively seeking government and foundation grants, as well as direct donations from generous individuals.
  • Donors Choose is a fantastic charity that teachers use to fill shortfalls in their classrooms. Although both charities directly connect donors with teachers, The Generation Project differs from Donors Choose in several important respects:

 

First, under the Donors Choose model, the ultimate creative force is always the educational professionaldonors just choose which teacher-projects to fund. In contrast, The Generation Project seeks to harness the passion and ingenuity of individuals from all professions. You no longer have to be Richard Branson or Bill Gates to make a targeted impact. The Generation Project hopes to engage a wide range of professionals in educational philanthropy, and attract a diverse array of donors to share their individual passions with students. Our model thus allows students to experience opportunities that their teachers simply might not be aware of.

Second, Donors Choose serves the important role of helping donors address lack of funding for classroom or school projects. But because The Generation Project leaves the ultimate creative control in the hands of donors, we hope to enlist a number of donors to fund annual (or ongoing) projects. If a donor, for example, designs and sponsors an inner-city debate team one year, that donor is likely to want to sponsor that same team again the next year, lest “her project” fall by the wayside. While Donors Choose fulfills teachers’ requests on a more ad hoc basis, The Generation Project is focused on establishing more lasting relationships between community members and low-income schools.

Finally, one benefit of The Generation Project for teachers is that they don’t have to wait for a project to get funded. Because our gifts are pre-funded and available, teachers can apply, get accepted, and immediately start planning their curriculum around an experience or opportunity.

In short, Donors Choose is an amazing charity that has helped bridge many classroom funding shortfalls, but it serves a different role for under-resourced schools than The Generation Project proposes.

 

Web Spotlight:

Diigo Group

Diigo Group for Middle School Matters:  http://groups.diigo.com/group/middle-school-matters

Google Cloud Connect

For those of you who have not made the full move to Google Docs and are still using Microsoft Office, Google has something great to offer. With Cloud Connect, people can continue to use the familiar Office interface, while reaping many of the benefits of web-based collaboration that Google Docs users already enjoy.

Users of Office 2003, 2007 and 2010 can sync their Office documents to the Google cloud, without ever leaving Office. Once synced, documents are backed-up, given a unique URL, and can be accessed from anywhere (including mobile devices) at any time through Google Docs. And because the files are stored in the cloud, people always have access to the current version.

Flipbook

Create an electronic flip book as a unit project.
http://www.benettonplay.com/toys/flipbookdeluxe/

Free On-line Professional Development

Welcome to OK2Ask, a series of live, online “snack sessions” (available both live and in archived format) for self-directed teacher professional development and exploration. These one-hour sessions, scheduled at convenient times for you to attend from any computer (kick off your shoes!) will share great ideas you can use in your classroom, courtesy of TeachersFirst’s staff. You know our style, so you know these sessions will be useful and teacher-friendly.
http://www.teachersfirst.com/OK2Ask.cfm

BIL Conference

In short, BIL is an open, self-organizing, emergent, arts, science, society and technology unconference held near the famous TED Conference during the trailing weekend of.
The concept of the BIL Conference started in late November 2007, when Cody Marx Bailey proposed the idea of going out to Monterey, CA and crashing the TED Conference to Todd Huffman and Bill Erickson. The idea was to simply get a group of people to make the pilgrimage and hang around the area the TED’sters would be schmoozing at night. As the group quickly snowballed from a handful of people to nearly thirty in a matter of weeks, the decision to hold our own unconference seemed, well, obvious.
Todd Huffman and Reichart von Wolfsheild proposed the name BIL, as it was catchy, short and best of all, unclaimed. It also had a bit of comedic value to take away some of the seriousness as it referenced the most excellent Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure.
Most of the planning was done through the open-to-the-public wiki hosted by PBWiki. This allowed anyone interested in making something cool happen able to contribute. Soon, Alexis Bright, Tyler Emerson (along with the Singularity Institute), Emi Joy, and Simone Syed would begin to play a major part as the potetial attendance neared closer and closer to the fire marshalls limit on the space that was reserved.
The week of TED 2008, the number of RSVPs had eclipsed the space limitations and the group was forced to spread the word that we could not take in any more attendees. BIL at that point had grown larger than anyone had expected.
BIL 2009 was held on the campus of California State University at Long Beach and with over 100 speakers and 500 participants, doubling the size the previous year.
http://www.bilconference.com/

Pecha Kucha

  1. A 20 slide multimedia presentation, narrated for 20 seconds per slide or a total of 6 minutes, 40 seconds.
  2. Learn more on WikiPedia.
  3. See an example, “What I Hope You Learned in this Class” (by Wesley Fryer, spring 2010)
  4. More examples from .pecha-kucha.org

http://wiki.wesfryer.com/t4t/resources/pecha-kucha-presentations

Book Club

How it works

  • Register for free
  • Register your free acount and be well on your way to starting your very own online book club.

Start your book club

  • Get your personalized book club started in just minutes!
  • Invite all your friends to join your book club.
  • Make your book club private or public and choose your first book.

Create optional meetings

  • Create meetings with meeting locations to discuss your current book.
  • Create one meeting or as many as you would like.

Create discussion topics

  • Create custom discussion topics or use the plain old chapter by chapter discussion.
  • Discuss and share your opinions, reviews, and ideas about books.

It’s not over yet

  • Whenever you have finished a book, its time to start over again!
  • Browse books and choose your next book.
  • Repeat!

http://www.bookclubit.com/

TED Education

Every minute, three hundred new learners are born into this world. How can TED play a role in enriching the education of these individuals? How can TED enrich the education of the billions of learners around the globe? We need your help to answer these questions.

In a few weeks, TED will be launching an online forum. We’re calling it the TED-ED Brain Trust. We’re seeking the expertise of visionary educators, students, organizations, filmmakers & other creative professionals to guide, galvanize & ultimately lead this exciting new initiative.

To express your interest in joining the TED-ED Brain Trust, please click the button below & fill out the short form. To invite capable colleagues, please share this page. We will notify you when we launch the Trust.

http://education.ted.com/

SocioClean

What is Socioclean?
Socioclean is a free service that enables you to monitor and clean your online social profile by analyzing your wall posts, status messages and photos for any ill-advised and inappropriate material that may harm your social reputation.

Will the service scan my private messages or just my public postings?
Socioclean will only scan postings, status messages, and photos that others are able to view as well. We will not scan email inbox or any other private areas.

Will Socioclean store my social network username and password?
We do not store any user information, but rely on social network API’s to make the user experience easier.

Could this be run on my profile without my username and password?
Report cannot be run without the permission of the user. Some API’s allow us to create session keys so to make the it an easier user experience we will not ask for the social network username and password every time the user logs onto Socioclean.

Does the service provide image recognition for pictures?
No, we do not provide image recognition for pictures.

Do the reports have a link to the information captured in the reports (after the service has been run)?
Report will have easy one click access to the posts or anything else that the user wants to delete. User would not have to go and find their post again within the social network interface.

What social networks are currently supported?
Currently, we only support Facebook, but are in the process of adding other social networks as well.

http://socioclean.com/

Events & Happenings:

Calendar of Events:

NMSA News:

      • Other News:
  • ISTE Eduverse Talks are the recorded sessions held on ISTE Island every week. Join ISTE in their Second Life conference location for their weekly talks on education.
    • The ISTE Special Interest Group:  Virtual Environments is holding meetings on Mondays from 4:00 – 6:00 pm (SLT) on ISTE Island.
  • The Ohio Middle Level Association will hold their annual conference February 16 – 17, 2011.
  • Second Life:
    • Regular Tuesday meetings are scheduled. See the board on the ISTE Island for up to the minute details.  Check frequently this week as the ISTE Annual Convention is this week.
    • Video: Educational Uses of Second Life
advisory, MSM, News, Podcast, Tech, Web SpotlightBy Troy Patterson

MSM 152 Knock, Knock, Troy’s Here!

Jokes:

Knock, Knock!
Who’s there?
Honey bee.
Honey bee who?
Honey bee a dear and get me a soda.

Knock, Knock!
Who’s there?
Hatch.
Hatch who?
Bless you and please cover your mouth next time.

On Our Mind:

PLAN and Explore! Tests:  Elimination of Social Studies Tests to pay for Explore! and PLAN tests.

From our Listeners:

Here’s the workflow:

  • I use Audio HiJack Pro to record our conversation (normally over Skype, but sometimes iChat)
  • I then move the audio files into GarageBand for Post Production (yeah, I actually do some post production).
  • I export the mp3 file from GarageBand.
  • I upload the show to our web site via Fetch (ftp program).
  • I copy the show notes from Google Docs into a blog post (wordpress blog).
  • I add the link to the end of the blog post using a Podcast plugin
  • I then add the link into Podcast Maker (this writes the xml file that I use).
  • I then use TextWrangler to open the xml file from the server at middleschoolmatters to update that file with the new information from Podcast Maker. (Had I not done some customizing early on, I could skip this step and just use Podcast Maker to upload the xml file).

Thus, the short of it is this: I use GarageBand, then create an xml file for the web site.

Advisory:

Music Lovers:
http://www.studiomultitracks.com/

Middle School Science Minute

by Dave Bydlowski (k12science or davidbydlowski@mac.com)
Lab Safety Training Videos
http://labsafety.flinnsci.com

NIH Findings Magazine
http://publications.nigms.nih.gov/findings

From the Twitterverse:

*CBrannon Reminder: Only dead fish go with the flow.
*garystager Gary Stager, Ph.D.Saying we need to “prepare” 100,000 teachers. What does that mean? Does that mean that the govt is going to pay for it?

@chaltertop Education needs to be linked to health & poverty. I also think all decisions should be made at the classroom level
*DoTheMathBooks Education begins the gentleman, but reading, good company and reflection must finish him. John Locke #quote
*TeacherSabrina LOL! RT @gatorbonbc: When did my status as teacher switch from unsung hero 2 Lex Luther, enemy of the free world? #GeezTheyCouldHaveWarnedUs
*drmmtatom What’s in a Surname? – A Map of Names #fhuedu508 http://tinyurl.com/4g3qubm
*mikeklonsky Alabama Republicans pass bill that bans teachers from state Legislature.
*hrheingold 9 proposed courses for Rheingold U
*russeltarr What Are the Seven Reading Comprehension Strategies?: http://tinyurl.com/ykevbdz
*rrmurry Tennessee teacher evaluation system still lacks specifics 6 months before launch [result of soul-selling for RTTT funds] tennessean.com/article/201101…
*LDpodcast #educon. Educon is like an education revival. Amen.

News:

Study on Testing

http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2011/01/27/boy-there-are-so-many-problems-with-this-times-article-or-the-study-its-about-or-both/

Common Core Resource

http://commoncore.pearsoned.com/

Commentary Collection: The Future of Teaching

This collection of Commentaries explores the future course of the teaching profession.

http://www.edweek.org/ew/collections/commentaries-the-future-of-teaching/index.html

Parent Taken to Court for Falsifying Residency
http://www.ohio.com/news/break_news/114658564.html
http://www.ohio.com/news/113828954.html

Resources:

Library Apps for iPhone/iPad

http://mashable.com/2011/01/27/art-gallery-apps-iphone/#view_as_one_page-gallery_box707

Google Apps for Education

The education technology space has seen an explosion of new offerings in the past few years. What has been missing is a centralized platform for schools and universities to easily evaluate and utilize web apps. Today we are excited to launch an education category in the Google Apps Marketplace designed specifically to help schools and universities easily discover and deploy new web applications that integrate with their existing Google Apps accounts.

The new education category includes over 20 applications from 19 vendors ranging from learning management systems (LMS) to student tools and teaching aids – all of which integrate with Google Apps for Education. Each app can be accessed through single sign-on and the Google universal navigation bar and many offer deeper integrations that synchronize with Google Calendar and Documents.

This new education category will make it easier for schools to have more web apps at their fingertips, including popular existing apps such as Aviary, Grockit, and LearnBoost as well as the new apps launching today.
http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2011/01/google-apps-just-got-smarter.html

Names

http://www.whatalovelyname.com/

Easel iPad App

http://www.easellearning.com/

Web Spotlight:

Challenge.gov

Challenge.gov is a place where the public and government can solve problems together.
http://challenge.gov/

TED Talks

http://kalinago.blogspot.com/2011/01/speaking-tips-for-teaching-english-with.html

Murphy’s Teaching Law

http://www.murphys-laws.com/murphy/murphy-teaching.html

A Class Divided

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/divided/

Events & Happenings:

Calendar of Events:

NMSA News:

Other News:

  • ISTE Eduverse Talks are the recorded sessions held on ISTE Island every week. Join ISTE in their Second Life conference location for their weekly talks on education.
    • The ISTE Special Interest Group:  Virtual Environments is holding meetings on Mondays from 4:00 – 6:00 pm (SLT) on ISTE Island.
  • The Ohio Middle Level Association will hold their annual conference February 17 – 18, 2011.
  • Second Life:
    • Regular Tuesday meetings are scheduled. See the board on the ISTE Island for up to the minute details.  Check frequently this week as the ISTE Annual Convention is this week.
    • Video: Educational Uses of Second Life