Lifelong Learning 2.0

Disappointed to find this out today!

Very disappointed!

Check out a virtual tour of the innovative new stage for the 360 tour.

Photo: U2

This month, CommonCraft is celebrating 2 years since their first video. Lee LeFever wrote a blogpost about it a few days ago.

“We had no idea what we were doing, or how that video would transform our lives. We had a tripod, camera and a whiteboard, and that was about it. The video was lit with bedroom lamps and I was speaking directly into the microphone on the camera as I moved around the pieces of paper. The video was edited with Windows Movie Maker.”

Did you know that CommonCraft is just a two-person company? Lee and Sachi LeFever are a husband and wife team, working out of their home in Seattle. A day after posting the first video, Lee says they saw “15,000+ page views, 800 Diggs, 350 Delicious bookmarks and 50 comments.” Amazing!

Now, you may be tired of those CommonCraft videos, as they seem to show up in so many presentations and blogposts. If I have to sit through a presentation watching the wiki video about planning a camping trip one more time, I may have to walk out for a coffee refill. But you have to admit they’ve done a fantastic job of explaining applications and tools in such a simple manner, that viewers become ready to take risks with trying it out.

New changes are coming for the website, including simplified video organization and videos in 5 languages. Voice-overs for several videos will be available in English, German, Portuguese, French and Spanish. The other feature that stood out for me was the organization of CommonCraft’s video library. They are choosing to focus on 4 categories. If you’re interested in the other changes, read about them here.

Photo Attribution: Common Craft Logo, CommonCraft Vidoes

Here are a few activities I shared on the blog I use with my students and their families.

Ten Web 2.0 Activities You Can Do With Your Kids

1. Go on a park hop.

Shared this with the homeschooling families I teach.  They loved it!  Start at home by searching for a few parks in a particular area.  Use an online mapping tool to map out your day.  When you’re at the park, give the camera to one of the kids to take a photo.  It’s great seeing pictures of the parks from their perspective.  Record that child’s thoughts about the location and features.  Have the kids take turns being the photographer and reporter for each park.  Later, map out the parks using place markers in Google Earth.  My students decided to create a placemarker, upload their picture, type a few sentences highlighting the best features of the park.  Now they can share the Park Hop Travel Guide with others.

2. Have an art day.

Turn up the music, set out materials, and get creative.  Have each child choose their best masterpiece and take a picture of it.  Upload the pictures to Art Snacks.  While there, check out the other artists and find 3 pieces of art that you enjoy on the network.  Choose a rating and leave a comment for those fellow artists.

3. Start a family blog.

Have each person be responsible to post on a particular day of each week.  Teach your kids how to find a picture using creative commons, and how to give photo attribution.  There are so many skills that can go into this one.  Want a safe way for the kids to surf the internet or keep a family blog?  Check out KidZui.

4. Write a song together and record it.

Upload it to your song and invite friends and family to listen to and post comments.

5. Create a digital storytelling project.

See what you can do with Photostory3.  Document a family vacation, a trip to the zoo, or what your family does on an ordinary day.

6. Interview an older family member.

Have the kids write the questions and record the interview.  Upload and share on YouTube or a video sharing site.

7. Plan a meal together.

Choose a theme and delegate the tasks.  Have each child find one recipe online that you can add to your menu.  Go back later and have them write a short review or post a rating for the dish.  Create an original dish together and photograph it.  Upload it to a recipe site and check back later to see what people think of it.

8. Review a book.

Check out an online bookstore such as Barnes and Noble, Jr., Borders, or Amazon and find a favorite book.  Have each child write a short review.  Consider choosing a new book or two to add to your library.

9. Become authors.

Publish your story and share it with others.  Decide on a topic and map out the storyline.  Give each person specific pages to write and illustrate.  Transfer your story to a self-publishing website for kids like this one.

10. Create a movie

Check out Kerpoof Animation Studio.  It’s free.  Animoto makes it easy to create videos.

10 Cool Web 2.0 Activities To Do With Your Kids are great, but 12 would be even better; with one activity for each month of the year!  Can you think of a great idea or two to add to this list?

Photo Attribution:  Kidzui, TikaTok, Computer Keys: Lizzardo

Lifehacker recently posted a helpful list of Top 10 Tools for a Free Online Education. Here are a few of his Top Ten Tools.

#5 Academic Earth and YouTube EDU

Of course, both are absolutely amazing resources for lifelong learning. Academic Earth provides thousands of video lectures from the world’s top scholars. I’ve been enjoying Guy Kawasaki’s videos recently. Institutions that are participating include Princeton, Stanford, Yale and MIT.

YouTube EDU offers endless opportunities for learning and discovery. I’ve always wanted to enroll with The Culinary Institute of America. Now I can have access to their lectures without the student loans. Subscribing makes it convenient so I don’t miss a lesson.

#6 Trade your skills, find an instructor

TeachMate connects people who have something to teach and want to learn something in exchange. Love the idea for this opensource project. So I could learn guitar or photography tips in exchange for teaching someone to make a vanilla bean creme brulee? Cool. Here are a few lessons TeachMate wants users to take away:

• You don’t need to be a professional to teach. Instead, you have to teach to become a professional.
• You don’t need to pay money for learning or ask for money when you teach someone.
• Learning is not about the degrees, it’s about the process and what you can do with your knowledge.

#7 Get started on a new language

Always looking for additional online tools to help my students who are taking Spanish, German, and Norwegian. Lifehacker’s post referenced Learn10, which delivers 10 vocabulary words per day through email, iGoogle or your iPhone. One Minute Languages delivers free weekly podcasts for several different languages. Conversational skills for 12 different languages, along with quizzes, can be found at Mango Languages.

#10 Teach yourself programming

While I’m not running out to learn programming code right now, I did find some helpful resources at the Google Code page. The CS Curriculum Resources link hosts a variety of links to tools for introductory programming for students. I found Scratch here. Scratch is a “programming language that makes it easy to create interactive stories, animations, games, music, and art — and share these creations on the web.”

Here’s Kevin Purdy’s complete list:

1. Learn from actual college courses online
2. Learn an instrument
3. Get an unofficial liberal arts major
4. Teach yourself all kinds of photography
5. Academic Earth and YouTube EDU
6. Trade your skills, find an instructor
7. Get started on a new language
8. Learn to actually use Ubuntu
9. Get a Personal MBA
10. Teach yourself programming

Read the full story on Lifehacker

Creative Commons Photo Attribution: jiashiang

Blogging Workshop at CUE

The benefits of blogging with students were the focus of a couple of the CUE sessions I attended. They focused on the features of popular blogging platforms. Discussion also centered around CyberSafety and ways to teach your students to participate in blogging, at an early age. Alice Mercer shared how “Blogging with elementary students is a good way to add transparency and engagement to learning, and to give students an authentic audience for their writing.”  I learned a lot from her workshop and the examples of how she engages her students in the process of leaving comments for fellow students on the blog. I was able to hear a wealth of information on blogging and great ideas. I even won a complementary support status on Edublogs.org for a year, thanks to Sue Waters at edublogs, and Alice Mercer.  There’s no excuse for putting off blogging with students.

Recently, I stumbled upon this article on Glencoe’s website. The author states the following about the functions that blogs can serve in the classroom.

Classroom Management
“Class blogs can serve as a portal to foster a community of learners. As they are easy to create and update efficiently, they can be used to inform students of class requirements, post handouts, notices, and homework assignments, or act as a question and answer board.”

Collaboration
“Blogs provide a space where teachers and students work to further develop writing or other skills with the advantage of an instant audience. Teachers can offer instructional tips, and students can practice and benefit from peer review. They also make online mentoring possible. Students can also participate in cooperative learning activities that require them to relay research findings, ideas, or suggestions.”

Discussions
“A class blog opens the opportunity for students to discuss topics outside of the classroom. With a blog, every person has an equal opportunity to share his or her thoughts and opinions. Students have time to react to ideas and reflect on learning. Teachers can also bring together a group of knowledgeable individuals for a given unit of study for students to network and conference with on a blog.”

Student Portfolios
“Blogs present, organize, and protect student work as digital portfolios. As older entries are archived, developing skills and progress may be analyzed more conveniently. Additionally, as students realize their efforts will be published, they are typically more motivated to produce better writing.”

Blogging Anyone?

I work at a charter school, supporting families who choose to homeschool or participate in independent study.  This year, I had hoped to have my students participate in blogging. I wanted to tie in their core subject assignments to their blog posts. I was excited to pilot this practice this year with a few students. When discussing the possibilities with a few parents, I found that they were not ready to embrace blogging.

Transfer of Enthusiasm – Take Two!

To help transfer enthusiasm for blogging, I realized a few things.

1. Modeling is important.  I need to be more consistent with blogging to keep my parents informed.
2. I need to invite them into the conversation with questions, polls, and relevant links.
3. Instead of emailing my newsletters, I need to move that content to the blog.
4. I needed to find a way to share information with parents about blogging and other tools.  I started working on a project to help them become familiar with the use of web 2.0 tools.  I hope to have it completed soon.
5. Lastly, I would like to have an orientation meeting in the fall to present the option of blogging, importance of CyberSafety, and the benefits of having their homeschooling children participate in the read/write web. I hope that by offering to meet them in small groups for a workshop, they may be more open to have their students participate in blogging and trying out new tools for learning.

What steps did you take to make your parents feel comfortable with having your students blogging in the classroom?

Photo Attribution

At the beginning of the year, the teachers at my school were asked to create a portfolio of artifacts that we worked on during our year of professional development activities.  Recently I began pulling together the audio and image files, screenshots of my blog and networks, and various notes into a Google doc. I enjoyed reflecting upon the process of learning, contributing, and collaborating this year. I gained a lot from the professional development training, online workshops and educational social networks that I participated in this year. I have so much more to learn, but am thankful for a network of people to learn from. The portfolio assignment forced me to be reflective on my own lifelong learning.

Keeping an electronic portfolio is a great way to organize artifacts, professional growth, and teaching reflections, but it is also a great tool for students. I remember using (paper) portfolios in the classroom, gathering work for conferences, open house, and end-of-the-year memorabilia. Now that I work with homeschooling students, I have been thinking of a way to get them set up virtually with electronic portfolios.  I want them to keep track of their educational achievement, projects, and community service activities. They can use the tool to keep track of their own goals, presentations, and artifacts to reflect on their own learning. I’m looking for a creative, interesting, and organized digital portfolio option.

It’s no surprise that college recruiters have embraced Web 2.0. I’ve been reading about how colleges are using blogs, social networking, YouTube and Facebook to find prospective students. Jon Corippo, who spoke at CUE, recently told me about Zinch. It is a mixture of Monster.com and Facebook for high school students heading off to college. It was started by three undergrads who wanted to create a tool to alleviate frustration for students involved in the process of looking for colleges. Students create a profile to “showcase” themselves to colleges. There is a portfolio feature that they can upload video and audio content, as well as pdf files. Colleges seek students out from the site and communicate using their tools. Students can also send messages to schools they are interested in, inviting them to check out their profile.

I’ve started sharing Zinch with my high school students this past week. We talked about ways they can highlight their work and prepare a portfolio for college. A few of them were interested in Zinch and saw the benefits of using a social networking tool for this purpose.  I would love to hear suggestions from anyone that has been helping their high school students create digital portfolios. What tools did you use?

Jefferson County Schools, in Tennessee, has a great collection of educational links on their website. Check on these pages on Geometry, Graphing, Fractions and Algebra. For more math links, check out the math page, which has 14 categories to choose from.

APlus Math has a variety of online flashcard games. The Math-O game is a fun way to practice addition facts. You can also create and print your own flashcards here.

MathBrain is a popular one with my students. You can choose your grade level and game piece that marks your place on the game board. The arcade-style games focus on various areas of math. Students love the fact that when you take a break, you can get a password that allows returning users to pick up where they left off.

FreeMathHelp is a wonderful resource for junior high and high school students. The lessons focus on: Algebra, Geometry, Trigonometry, Calculus, and Statistics. After the lesson, students can play games for practice, or ask questions on the message boards.

My students have had great success in boosting their math skills with the videos from the Khan Academy. I’ve tried a few different ones, but my students seem to go back to these most often. If you aren’t familiar with it, take a look at the website, where you’ll find the entire video library or subscribe to the Khan Academy channel on YouTube.

Salman Khan is the man behind the Khan Academy. Sal describes the mission for his not-for-profit organization as “providing a high quality education to anyone, anywhere. We have 700+ videos on YouTube covering everything from basic arithmetic and algebra to differential equations, physics, and finance.”

of literature, history, poetry, and writing.”

I’ve been hearing great things about Shmoop lately.  As described on their about page, “Shmoop wants to make you a better lover (of literature, history, poetry and writing).  See many sides to the argument.  Find your writing groove.  Understand how lit and history are relevant today.  We want to show your brain a good time.  Our mission:  To make learning and writing more fun and relevant for students in the digital age.”  Anyone tried out Shmoop yet?

The CUE conference was a time to be inspired, learn about using technology to engage students, and collaborate with peers.  Over the past year, I’ve gotten to know other educators online that I was finally able to meet in person at some of the CUE sessions.  It was very cool to meet people in my PLN that have had such an influence on my journey of learning.

In my first workshop, Mike Lebsock shared how he used Ning to create a digital learning hub for students.  I have a particular interest in using social networks in education and have started several Nings myself this past year.  I’ve been building one to use with parent educators who home school.  However, I didn’t think of using it with students in the same way that Mike has done.  I plan to restructure the Ning I created for parents and students, to incorporate some of the things Mike suggested.

Continuing on the social networking theme, I attended a panel workshop that included several of the educators that I’ve gotten to know recently through online networks.  It focused on the value of social networking in education.  The discussion revolved around digital safety for students and how to maintain the enthusiasm as a moderator.  The debate over the term “social networking” was interesting.  People I spoke with afterwards were hesitant to have their students join a social network, even if it were only opened to the members of the class.  They spoke of negative aspects of MySpace, and didn’t like the idea of a social network.  I agree with the discussions from the panel.  Perhaps we need to change the term for educational purposes.  Maybe “collaborative learning community” would be a better fit.
One of my goals is to teach a parent/student workshop on digital citizenship at the beginning of each school year.  I was interested in finding tools for encouraging online safety.  Here are three sites than Kenneth Shelton shared with me:

1. Cybersafety from CTAP focuses on six areas of online safety.  I plan to share this R U Cybersafe? poster with my students.
2. Cybersmart Cybersmart is a nonsequential curriculum model with printable worksheets and lessons by grade level.
3. This Digital Citizenship and Creative Content teacher’s guide is a free turnkey instructional program.  Check out the My Bytes part of the site.  They’ve built in a music mixer and showcase to give students an opportunity to be creative and grasp the benefit of protecting their creative rights.  I like how they provide a fun way to have students put their newly learned digital citizenship skills into action.

That’s a wrap for the first few sessions at CUE.  I found a wealth of resources at the remaining sessions, which I’d love to share.  I’ll add them here soon.