Rock Enroll

Those of us who have been in education for some time have been through more in-service and professional development sessions than we can remember. Most often, they are forgettable. While some are inspiring and on-target with what will help you and your students, many leave you thinking that you’d rather use the time grading papers or working with your students. You have seen all sorts of ideas designed to promote good teaching. The latest I’ve not seen, but have read about is Teach Like a Rock Star.  It sounds quite interesting. The leader is Hal Bowman, teacher and author, who leads educators in his dynamic sessions to help raise tests scores, motivate individual students, become a classroom leader, build better connections with students, create enthusiasm, become a positive influence in students’ lives, and “tap their own ability to uncover The Rock Star Teacher that lies within.”

21st Century Teaching & Learning Plan

Attention School Leaders: ASCD (Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development and CoSN (Consortium for School Networking) have announced that they will work together to provide the online course: From Vision to Action: The 21^st Century Teaching and Learning Plan.  This will be a collaborative and interactive program in which school leaders will work together using tools such as readings, videos, presentations and application exercises to develop and implement a plan, which will reflect 21^st century teaching and learning. The price for the course is $99.

A Puzzle with Some of the Pieces Missing

It’s a giant puzzle, isn’t it? A puzzle with some of the pieces missing. That’s what it feels like if you are a teacher or school administrator trying to decide which direction to head with curricular materials, methods, and equipment. Looking at what’s available, you’ll find traditional textbooks, online courses complete with management systems, courses that are basically text-based but make use of specific digital resources, apps such as the iBook Author that let your teachers or staff develop their own courses, online curricular content for a portion of a course, software you can purchase for your school server or individual computers, apps for specific learning areas, online experiments. . .  Pulling together what is best for your students is not easy, especially when the puzzle is complicated by the need for digital devices and robust wireless networks.

The Education Week Webinar, Forging the Technology – Curriculum Link might help you get started fitting the pieces of your curriculum together. It’s scheduled for March 1, 2012, but if you can’t make the session you can sign up (it’s free) and review what took place in the seminar anytime within the next six months.

ISTE 2012

Join other technology in education leaders at the International Society for Technology in Education Conference at the San Diego Convention Center, June 24-27. Use the Program Custom Search to find sessions of interest to you. You’ll be invited to choose from 700 concurrent sessions, visit over 500 exhibitors, and to attend three keynote addresses. Take advantage of in-depth workshops offered as full-day and half-day sessions on Saturday, June 23 – Wednesday, June 27.  As for workshops you may want to consider: filmmaking bootcamp, digital storytelling, exploring online freebies, going green, beyond textbooks, animated video, managing Google apps, music, Moodle, and so many other topics. Watch the ISTE convention and expo video or visit the site to learn more.

Anime Studio 7 from Serif

Serif is offering its Anime Studio Debut, an all-in-one 2D animation software program for Windows computers, for $29.99. With it, your students can create their own cartoons and animations. The program is designed to be used by everyone from beginning animators to those who are already adept at the skill, so it includes a beginner’s mode, ready-made artwork, timeline animating, animation tools to bring photos to life, and more.  

Social Media in Schools

eSchool News Online Editor Meris Stansbury, in her article "Ten Ways Schools Are Using Social Media Effectively”, asked readers how they were using social media in education or how they would like to use it if they could. With teachers, parents, and administrators worried about possible bullying and privacy issues related to the use of social media in schools, it’s good to learn how some educators are making social media work for them and their students. Answers varied from educator use to learning about tech tools to cross cultural communication to bringing real-world applications into subjects such as mathematics. Schools have found that using social media is a good way to contact and interact with parents, to announce events, and even to help students review course content.  So how do educators using social media in schools avoid misuse? One suggested using private social networks made possible through sites like schoology.com, and another recommended the paid version of Gaggle.net. Although the article doesn’t mention this, it is likely that educators using social media with students set specific guidelines to be followed and monitor student online interaction as best they can.

Will Use of Tablet Devices Cause Head and Neck Pain?

How are your students using tablet devices such as iPads and the Motorola Xoom in the classroom? Do they have them flat on their desks, in their laps, or propped up at an angle on their laps or desks? Answers could mean a difference in whether students develop head or neck pain. Harvard researchers found that “participants heads and necks were in more flexed positions while using the tablets than those typical of desktop or notebook computer users.” It is known that those who have poor posture when sitting with the neck and head slumped forward, especially for long periods of time, may find themselves with head and neck pain. According to the researchers, the best way to use a tablet computer is to put it on a desk or table and use the tablet’s case to prop it up at the highest angle (73 degrees for the iPad, for example). In addition to placement of the tablet, researchers recommended that “users vary their postures every 15 minutes.” The group plans future studies involving wrist position when using touchscreens.

Healthy Students: Mindful Eating

How do we encourage our students to eat right? Recommend mindful eating. That’s what Lilian Cheung, a lecturer in nutrition for the Harvard School of Public Health, advises. Helping our students think before grabbing a sugary snack and while they are taking each bite, will help them focus upon what they are putting into their bodies. You may want to take a look at Cheung’s Harvard site, The Nutrition Source, and watch her video, which describes the seven practices of mindful eating. Using resources such as this and those that detail the problems of sugary drinks and overuse of salt might help students think twice before nibbling mindlessly on salty chips while enjoying a too-sweet drink or downing a meal from a fast food restaurant. Considering the problems of obesity of students in our schools today, it’s wise to take advantage of the instant and up-to-date health information available from reliable online sources.

Solutions to Problems in Education

Blackboard and NBC Learn teamed to produce Solutions in Action, a video series about people who are making a difference through use of technology in education. Featured speakers include Dr. Freeman Hrabowski, President of University of Maryland, Baltimore County; Julie Young, President and CEO, Florida Virtual School; and Marc Ecko, Fashion Designer & Founder, Sweat Equity Education.  Dr. Hrabowski discusses how technologies encourage students in mathematics and science. His UMBC leaders believe that groups of four students around a central monitor can work together to take charge of their education. Hrabowski says that we need to keep an open mind about innovative use of technologies. Young advocates virtual schools so that students can learn at their own pace outside of the traditional classroom. She believes that virtual schools not only are beneficial to students, but in addition, are a cost-effective method of delivering what students need to learn. Ecko approaches learning through design, hands-on experiences, and technology so that students can see what it is like to be a designer or an engineer. To Ecko, it’s not the technology, but the content that works with the technology, that’s important. The videos of Hrabowski, Young, and Ecko are available online.

What is Blended Learning?

Although the Edutopia article, “From the Classroom: What Does Blended Learning Look Like?” (February 8, 2012), gives an example of a high school English class, the ideas in the piece by teacher Melissa Meyers, should be of interest to all teachers. Meyers, who teaches in a private K-12 special education school, discusses the teaching of Dante’s work with her Grade 12 World Literature class. Her students, even though they have disabilities such as severe dyslexia, writing disorders, and speech and language difficulties, are taken to Hell through the Website Virtual Inferno, which leads them on a journey through the nine levels. They play Dante’s Inferno video game using it as a step off to their research and writing.  “Franz Liszt’s A Symphony to Dante’s Divide Comedy is accompanied by Gustave Dore’s illustrations on Youtube, and ... Dante-era Florence through the “Firenze-Virtual History” iPad app.” To help with their reading of the Inferno, they have it available as an audio book on their iPads. That’s what blended learning is all about—integrating technologies in order to invigorate learning.