21st-Century Learning: The New Visionary Administrator Speaks Up!

The CEO of Project Tomorrow (the non-profit organization that runs the national survey of students, teachers, parents, and admininstrators called "Speak UP!") shared the responses of the Fall 2008 survey with a focus on responses of visionary leaders. From the 2008 Fall survey, Project Tomorrow discovered from the data that there is a growing cadre of visionary leaders whose technology skills and goals are more closely aligned with their students than with their teachers. To view the report, click this link - http://www.tomorrow.org/speakup/leadership21_visionaryAdmin.html. My beliefs about student, teacher, and admininstrator's responses to the survey seemed to be along the same lines. Hopefully, we too can participate in this survey this coming fall.

Teaching Elementary Students with Scratch Programming

Christopher Michaud, Nebo Elementary
Tuesday, 6/30/2009, 11:00am–12:00pm WWCC 150 B

Christopher used his expertise with working with elementary students to help us digital immigrants how to use the free open source program called SCRATCH that allows students to create games, simulations, and tell stories through computer science and programming. The main information for this presentation is located at http://nebomusic.net/necc2009BYOL.html.

Check out Chris' link at http://nebomusic.net/Polygon_Step_By_Step.html which has the directions for creating a shape painter program in SCRATCH.

This is such an amazing and "tangible" way to teach math, logic and technological fluency! I think this activity alone could incorporate so many of the NJ State Standards.

Tammy's Tech Tools

Bright and early, Steve Chard, Donetta Marconi, and I arrived for our first real session. Her handout can be found at...

http://www.tammyworcester.com

Tammy's session was very practical and a great way to get started. She started out by sharing the gem called - http://www.todaysmeet.com which allows you to set up an impromptu chat room for free using a web browser.

Highlights from session:

Tammy's Tech Tools

1. Check out the link for the handout with all of the links - http://www.tammyworcester.com/Tammys_Favorite_Tips,_Tricks,_%26_Tools/Web_Tools.html.
2. Jamstudio - http://www.Jamstudio.com - allows students to use web to create music with various software instruments and then they can download and used in PowerPoint or other location.
3. Vocaroo - http://vocaroo.com - allows you to freely create recordings that can be embedded into web pages. Great use for posting to a class blog -- have students come up individually each day and record what happened during class that day.
4. Jing - http://www.jingproject.com and Skitch (best for Mac) - download the program to then capture screen shots, but instead of just sitting in the clipboard, you can annotate and do so much more. Additionally, this will record your voice and mouse movement. You can also move to Screencast which allows you to embed your video /image or download.
   
5. Similar Keepvid - http://www.keepvid.com - which allows you to harvest YouTube videos, KickYouTube helps teachers to download videos to bring into school. When you find the YouTube video on YouTube, in the address bar, just add "kick" before the word "youtube." Then you will be able to download it various formats. This is a huge advancement in working around streaming issues. No downloading, no fees, no extra links.
   
6. CoolTools - http://www.cooltools.net - has a Random Name generator http://classtools.net/main_area/template_loader.php/?fruit_machine that pulls up invidual names one by one for students to answer a question... You can use this when you are asking students to review facts as well if you enter the facts in the text box and then "pull the lever" to see which fact comes up for the student to answer. Another option is that you can embed this tool into your blog.
7.