Academic Musings & Tech for Learning

These past few days at the NECC conference in DC have been filled with interesting and wonderful sessions, speakeers, demo’s, workshops, and presentations. It’s over now, and I’ll be blogging multiple posts about some of the those items. ISTE did an exception job of organizing things and the VSTE (Virginia State Technology Educators) also played a large part in making everything run smoothly.

I was also very lucky to win a Fabulous prize!!! After enjoying the presention by RM Education of “Singin’ and Signin’” math formulas, I won one of their RM Classpads and Easiteach software. This object is the size of book, like a tablet, and lets you write on a whiteboard from anywhere in the room !! It’s really special and I can’t wait to use it.

Their software provides excellent tools as well. They partnered with “Singin and Signin” and we were treated to the Math lessons and sang about the formula of a cube to the tune of “If you’re happy and you know it” … Check them out at www.rmeducation.com and www.nickynote.com.

It was a great conference; there was so much to choose from, so much to see, thousands of teachers, and great exhibits. I sure hope to go again next year.

I am really excited to be attending this year’s NECC, my first, and the Edubloggercon unconference. I’ve signed up for lots of BYOL sessions and I’ll blog about them about when I can.

I am also volunteering for a few hours on Saturday. You can find me at from 3:00 PM - 6:00 PM  at the Ask Me Station - Level 1 - Street Level. Hopefully I’ll have some answers!

Do say Hello if you’re there!

These summer sessions take place at the FDR National Park Historic Site in Hyde Park. New for this year there is a day of Field Trips, one of which is in and around Yonkers, and another in nearby Rockland County. The cost for all three days is as low as $85. I went last year, and really enjoyed the conference, met great people, and learned a lot of interesting things that I was able to use in my teacher workshops.

I will be going back this year too, and I’ve chosen to go to the Norrie Point Environment Center for the Day 2 Field Trip on July 29. The Summer Institute runs from 7/28-7/31/09.

“THV’s annual summer institutes are rare opportunities for K-12 teachers, museum staff, environmental educators, and anyone interested in Hudson Valley arts, environment, and history.  Learn about the region and place-based education with scholars, teachers, scientists, and each other.  Choose from a range of interdisciplinary sessions including hands-on workshops, panel discussions, field trips, and more formal presentations.

This year we focus on two broad themes.  First, how schools and informal learning sites can work together whether or not there is money for field trips.  And, second, using inquiry-based learning to connect schools and informal sites in new ways. ”

Go to their website for registration form and more information.

Tim Holt blogs about MI’s in this post on his blog.

“I propose that there is a multiple intelligence for students that related directly to technology. I call it Multiple Technology Intelligences (MTI).”

• Animation Intelligence: Student learn by creating drawings and animations.
• Gaming Intelligence: Students learn through simulation, whether creating or playing.
• Video Intelligence: Students learn through the creation of multimedia video content such as digital storytelling.
• Music Intelligence: Student learn through the creation of music, ringtones, jungles, etc.
• Podcasting Intelligence: Student learn through the creation of audio narratives.
• Office Intelligence: Students learn best through the use of traditional office-style programs.
  
• Connecting Intelligence: Students learn best through the use of social networking. This also includes video conferencing.”

In creating assignments for students, it is important to allow them a choice of avenues for learning and presenting.This list of multiple technologies is an exceptionally great way to look at it and compare it to Gardner’s categories. Go to the post for some insightful comments. I particularly like adding Programming to the Gaming category.

I stumbled upon this pictorial from the NY Times that illustrates how reading has changed with the advent of the WWW.

While I cannot locate an accompanying article, it should be noted that new reading devices are also part of the evolution. There the new Kindle, another reader from Sony, and some tout the iPod Touch. These links take a look at those. I really like the size and readability of the Kindle, but there are drawbacks.

Just today there’s a video from David Pogue, but his article is much more enlightening.

NY Times 2/24/09 by David Pogue. The Kindle: Good Before, Better Now: While the changes in the new Kindle are fairly minor, they’re exactly what was needed to turn a very good electronic book reader into an even better one.

David Crystal on the Semantic Web

Traditional semantics is the science of meaning in a language. But on the WWW it’s got new meaning. Perhaps you’ve heard the term Semantic Web and wondered what that’s all about. There’s a non-technical keynote speech from the Breakthrough ‘09 conference, a iMedia marketing summit, by Linguist David Crystal which explains this concept rather well (March 22-25, 2009). You can watch the video here. For a written summary, visit this page.

Although this conference is about marketing, advances in the semantic web could be important for education, too. One of the issues teachers have using the Internet in classrooms center around filtering and blocking so that inappropriate sites and ads aren’t viewable to students.  The main idea about the semantic web is to provide contextually appropriate material (ads) to viewers.

Perhaps this can also be applied to searching, and a coding entry  (XML) can be inserted to prevent inappropriate web pages and ads from appearing in schools more accurately. I also thought it interesting that he has identified about 3,000 knowledge base categories for classifying data.

David Crystal has written many books and articles. An interesting one is txtng the gr8 db8 and his article The joy of txt. Spotlight, November, 16-21addresses concerns about texting and language usage: “The more children text, the more they’re reading and writing.” From his Biography “David Crystal is currently patron of the International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language (IATEFL) and the Association for Language Learning (ALL), president of the UK National Literacy Association, and an honorary vice-president of the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists, the Institute of Linguists, and the Society for Editors and Proofreaders.” He’s also got a blog at http://david-crystal.blogspot.com/.

Blogging is used by many teachers… duh.. here we are at Edublogs. One very constructive collaboration that’s developed is between Prof. Lewis at the University of Regina and Kathy Cassidy, a first grade teacher in Moose Jaw SK. In the winter of 2008, Professor Lewis’s class of pre-serviceteachers became blogging mentors for Kathy Cassidy’s grade one students.

In their presentation available at http://k12onlineconference.org/?p=319, Lewis & Cassidy talk about their project and report on the results of research that was conducted about the effect this mentoring has had on the students and their writing.

Ms. Cassidy’s class blogs at http://classblogmeister.com/blog.php?blogger_id=1337&l=1237330856, and she has her own blog at http://primarypreoccupation.wordpress.com/.

Another research study centered around this blog and how parents viewed it. You can read about it here: http://primarypreoccupation.wordpress.com/2008/10/02/proving-it/

www.Classtools.net website has an online tool that lets you create educational games, activities and diagrams in a Flash!, using Flash. You can then host your creations on your own website, or blog, though I was unable to embed it here. There’s no signup or passwords and it is free.

Here’s an example of the Dustbin game I created about musical instrument families.

Click here for full screen version

In addition to a few flash games, there’s a countdown timer available with music, a random name selector and a variety of graphic organizers.

It’s been 150 years since Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species’ was published. This week in the Science Times of the NY Times you’ll find some intriguing essays, plus an interactive featuring the entire text with some commentary of the revolutionary and controversial work. In addition to some interesting commentary, the text is searchable and you can download the PDF.

February 9, 2009

On Darwin’s ‘On the Origin of Species’

In addition to being the 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birth, 2009 is the 150th anniversary of the publication of his fundamental work, “On the Origin of Species.” As with many original sources, it is known mostly by reputation. Few people who are not biologists read Darwin in the original. But his writing can still offer surprises, insights and pleasures, and it can be sampled here, with selections by prominent scientists of their favorite passages and discussions of why these passages are important. (Related Articles)

The articles pose some interesting questions as well. We humans are just another species, something which seems to get lost in our understanding of purselves and the world at times.

Also, Nova repeated the special “Judgment Day | Intelligent Design on Trial” which I found to be a fascinating look at the controversy in this country about teaching evolution and ‘creationism’ in the classroom. The website has schedules and great resources.

I was just watching an episode of Universe on the History Channel, Deadly Comets & Meteors. They highligted the Earth Impact Effects Program from the University of Arizona. At http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/impacteffects/ you can enter different variables and calculate the effect of a colliding asteroid. Click the links for examples of previous events and see what catastrophes you can create. There are no visuals, but that’s a good exercise for students. For a nice write-up about the program read Space.com’s article Catastrophe Calculator: Estimate Asteroid Impact Effects Online by Robert Roy Britt.

This episode also shows you one way to make your own comet. Line a mixing bowl with a plastic garbage bag. Pour water into a bowl, add couple of teaspoons of dirt, a little corn syrup, window cleaner (ammonia), and mix. Add dry ice.. voila! comet! See what happens as it warms up. This recipe was far from exact, but it doesn’t need to be. You Tube has a couple of videos … The BBC did a program called the Comet’s Tale and the excerpt is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OttjwJY8A-0. They used soy sauce instead of corn syrup, and smelling salts instead of window cleaner, but the results are strikingly similar.

The Discovery Channel is also featuring Cosmic Collisions on tv’s How Stuff Works Series. There’s a Cosmic Collision Quiz here. Check the Space Guide http://dsc.discovery.com/space/ for short, interesting videos and articles.