I’ve Moved

While this blog and all of its links will remain active, I am no longer posting here. Instead, please visit my new blog located here.

Permission to Fail

How often do we give ourselves permission to fail at something?  What about our students?

The History Lab

In my last post, I shared that one of my goals this year is to help my students become more active participants and contributors in my classroom.  And while I have several ideas of my own about how to make this happen (Class Notebook, Delicious), I have also spent a great deal of time searching for what others are doing.  So I started bookmarking websites only to decide that there has to be a better way.

What I really want is a database that includes all of these great ideas in one place.  One that I can search for inspiration or use to share and collaborate with other social studies teachers.  And since I couldn’t find such a site (at least not one organized in quite the way I envision it), I decided to create one, the History Lab.

My hope is that social studies teachers can use the site as a resource for project ideas.  At the very least, it will grow into the database I was hoping to find as I add more of my finds in the coming weeks.

Taking IT to the Next Level…

While I haven’t quite worked out all of the details yet, THIS is what I want for my classroom:

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For more information on Technology in the Classroom, try the following resources:

• A Difference: Distributed Teaching and Learning
• A Difference: Scribes Spreading
• Students as Contributors: The Digital Learning Farm
• Teaching in the Next Way

What’s in the Widgetbox?

I’ve spent most of the last week setting up my class website in order to get it ready for students on Friday (more on that later).  In doing so, I’ve spent a great deal of time playing around with Widgetbox looking for fun gadgets to drop into the sidebars of the site.  And I’m impressed.  While I can’t guarantee that it is truly the “World’s best place to find and make widgets,” I can say that is my favorite.

First, I was able to make a couple of customized widgets in less than ten minutes, complete with tabs for  Twitter accounts,  Delicious bookmarks, and news updates from NPR and CNN.  And while my final products required a Pro account ($29.99/year), I could have accomplished similar results using a couple of different free widgets.

In addition to allowing you to create a customized widget, Widgetbox also offers a number of free pre-made widgets perfect for educators.  Among my favorites are:

General Education

• Google Calendar Embed
• My Progress Bar

English

• Grammar Girl Quiz
• Rhyme Dictionary
• SAT Vocabulary

Mathematics

• Maths-Whizz Scientific Calculator

Science

• NASA TV
• Periodic Table
• Science in the News
• Unit Converter
• USGS Earthquake Monitor
• Weather 3D

Social Studies

• Bill of Rights
• Find Your US Representative
• Geography in the News
• History in the News
• NewsHour Extra
• Political Bedfellows
• Supreme Court Watch
• This Day in History
• Timeline: US Presidents
• World Counters

It is important to note, however, that free widgets often run ads (I never ran across anything inappropriate for students) and that Widgetbox does not play well with WordPress.com.

And, as always, I’ll add widgets to the list as I find them so feel free to leave a comment with your favorites.

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For more educational widgets for your website, try the following resources:

• ClustrMaps
• Google Books
• National Geographic
• PollDaddy
• Show Yourself

Mark Your Calendars!

The annual K12 Online Conference provides the opportunity to participate in a first rate conference from the comfort of your living room…for free.  From December 7-11 and December14-17, forty presentations will be posted online at the conference blog allowing viewers to participate in both real time and on their own (I watched recordings of the 2007 sessions while standing in line to vote last year).

Sessions that I am looking particularly forward to include:

• Building on Analog Success with 2.0 Technology with Kelley Connolly
• Bridging History Using Web 2.0 Tools with Robin Beaver
• Organizational Learning and Technology Collide with Ben Grey
• Probing the Possibilities of a Paperless Pedagogy with Jason Neiffer
• Building a Web 2.0 Culture with Paul Curtis
• Ways of Working with Chris Betcher
• Nurturing the 21st Century History Teacher with Thomas Daccord
• Googlios: When Google Apps Meet ePortfolios & PLNs with G. Alex Ambrose
• Remixing in the Classroom: Engagement for History Students with Neil Stephenson
• Thriving in a Collaborative Web 2.0 Classroom with Thomas Daccord

Be sure to check out the entire conference program to find your favorites.

BCHS 2009 Homecoming Parade

BCHS Cougars: Towering above the Competition

Start a Discussion on an Edu Ning

Once again, I am reorganizing the tabs above and thought that this information deserved a permanent home.  And as always, I will continue to add sites as I find additional examples so feel free to leave a comment with your favorites.

General Education

• Classroom 2.0 – Steve Hargadon
• Content Literacy – Roland O’Daniel
• Discovery Educator Network – Steve Dembo
• EduBloggerWorld – Steve Hargadon
• The Educator’s PLN – Thomas Whitby
• Flat Classrooms – Julie Lindsey
• The Future of Education – Steve Hargadon
• The Global Education Collaborative – Lucy Gray
• iConnect iLearn in the 21st Century – Kevin Honeycutt
• Make IT Personal – Valerie Becker
• Ning in Education – Ning
• Seedlings – Bob Sprankle
• UDL4All – Lisa Thumann

Art Education

• Art Education 2.0 – Craig Roland

EFL Education

• EFL Classroom 2.0

English Education

• AP English – Dawn Hogue
• English Companion – Jim Burke
• NCTE Ning – NCTE

Mathematics Education

• Mathematics 24×7 – Rashmi Kathuria

Science Education

• Molecular Forces – Marta Toran
• Teaching Science 2.0 – Eric Brunswell

Social Studies Education

• I Teach Social Studies – Angela Cunningham
• NCSS Network – NCSS

Technology Education

• Google in Education – Dorit Eilon
• The Interactive WhiteBoard Revolution – Chris Betcher
• VoiceThread for Educators – Mark Carls

Professional Development Meme Update

No surprise…I’m a bit behind in getting to this.  Nevertheless, here it is:

My Goals

• Rework my class websites (here and here) so that they better compliment one another, allow for a deeper understanding of class content, and create more opportunities for collaboration both in and beyond my school.  Look to the Maine Holocaust Education Network as an example of what can be done.

I am actually quite proud with how my iClassroom Wiki has shaped up.  It has a nice, clean look and allows students…and their parents…to access class materials and updates.  Students have even started building their own encyclopedia on the site.  The iClassroom Ning, however, has not been touched.  I can’t get past the fear that we will walk in one day and find it…and all of our materials…blocked by the District filters.  I have requested a hosted WordPress blog as a replacement (in May), but I’m still waiting for access to it.

• Learn more about Google Apps for Education and VoiceThread.

I am getting more and more comfortable with Google Apps and plan to introduce them to students as soon as they are officially trained to use District email, allowing them to register for their own Google accounts.  And students will use Voicethread to encourage discussion in their encyclopedia entries.

• Connect with other educators…
  • Online via Twitter, I Teach Social Studies (which I have seriously neglected lately), and all of the other Ning Networks that allow me to lurk in the shadows.
  • Face-to-Face via NECC

I continue to contribute to Twitter and a variety of Nings on a semi-regular basis.  And NECC was an incredible experience that has encouraged me to attend other conferences this year, including NCSS in November and EduCon (hopefully with my principal) in January.

• Read (at the very least) Outliers, Reinventing Project-Based Learning, Grown Up Digital, The Global Achievement Gap, and Disrupting Class.

I finished both Outliers and Tipping  Point, but got a bit stalled on the rest.

In my spare time, I also plan to add links to the various pages on this blog, annotate the bookmarks I’ve saved via Delicious and Diigo, and redesign my freshman social studies course in order to make more connections with the other teachers on my team.

I did start tagging my social studies bookmarks with Kentucky Core Content numbers, but never got around to properly annotating them all.  I guess it’s still a work in progress.

What are the chances of adding an extra couple of weeks to this summer so I can actually make it to the end of this list?

While I didn’t complete everything on the list, I am still proud of what I did accomplish this summer.

I am actually quite proud with how my iClassroom Wiki shaped up.  It has a nice, clean look and allows students -

TED Talks with Sir Ken Robinson

This has been around for nearly 3 years, but I think it’s worth watching again.

Ideas Worth Sharing:

• We all have a vested interest in education.
• We are preparing our students today for a tomorrow that we can only begin to imagine.
• Creativity, the process of having original ideas that have value,  is as important in education as literacy.
  • Our current education system strips children of their creativity.
  • We must encourage risk-taking – in our students and ourselves.
• The entire structure of education is shifting, requiring us to rethink our views on intelligence.
  • Intelligence is diverse.
  • Intelligence is dynamic.
  • Intelligence is distinct.