Global Learning Communities

Global Learning Community
Lester Holt and two teacher who created an outstanding global learning community with their students spoke about the wonderful possibilities in your classroom. One of the teachers said if you wait until you are an expert with the technology or the techology resources, you will never use it in your classroom. You need to dive in with your students and learn with them. Here are some links provided during this session. Social studies, current events, history and language arts teachers will love icue.
NBC News has provided a great global learning environment free of charge. Check them out.
http://takingitglobal.org/
http://iearn.org/
http://www.icue.com/
http://www.hotchalk.com/nbc.html
As one teacher stated:
Its not about the technology, its about the relationships, the connections globally.

Transforming Technology Projects from Good to Great

Gary Stager
www.stager.org/necc
Projects need to be student directed and student led.
Books to improve project based learning - http://constructivistconsortium.org/books
Elements of a Project:

• Purpose
• Time
• Personally meaningful
• Complex, including serendipity
• Connected
• Shareable
• Access and Constructive Materials

Questions Worth Asking:

• Is the problem solvable?
• Is the project monumental or substantial? - a pile of worksheets is not a project
• Who does the project satisfy?
• What can they do with that? - the project needs to lead to bigger questions or theory

Visual Literacy: Equipping Students for the Visual World

Lynell Burmark
http://educatebetter.org

See to Learn - Visual Literacy Book on CD in full color
lynell@educatebetter.org

Visual Literacy - Reading and writing about pictures or producing images intentionally and purposefully.

Images:
What can you observe?
What can you infer?

We want to believe what we see.
Text can be visual - the image of certain text has great visual value such as FedEx.
Most people's eyes are drawn to color and image before black and white
Using ads - put together an new ad on the side effects
Ask your students: Why do you think the ad didn't show the facts of the side effects?
Have the students name the Simpson family from a picture
Now have them name the first 5 freedoms in the Declaration of Independence
What we see we remember. If only the Declaration of Independence had a hit TV show!
What is visual goes to the long term memory.
Eye to Brain - 1,000,000 fibers
Ear to Brain - 30,000 fibers
Humans process visuals 60,000 times faster than text - use images
Keyborard - sequential - text
Camera - simultaneous - image
Words can only recall images we have already seen.
Start a lesson with images!!
A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words - Lesson in Thinkfinity - Divide the room into groups - have students talk as one of the images in the picture as the horse, the dog, the grandma, the mother, the children in the images. What are they thinking?
Use images to set a timeline in history. A way of testing prior knowledge.
Progressive Story- Use a series of images and have a group of three students create a story. As each image appears, each student continues the story based on the image on the screen. This is a great way to review, have students provide the images for the story, or great for speaking assignment.
Multi-Media Learning - Richard E. Mayer - check out this book
Image with a Voiceover is what makes the learning most beneficial
Recall and retention are boosted 42%
Transer, application is boosted 89%
The voice over could be words, music, text boxes, video
Sullivan Ballou Lettter on YouTube - excellent example
Resources for Images:

• go to Lynell's site - http://educatebetter.org - contact Marcia for Login and Password
• Also for her handouts
• Pics4Learning - another great website for images
• morguefile is a great place for hi-res images
• flickr - can build a community for gathering images -Social Networking

Don't do stacked in time, do adjacent in space!

eMINTS--a fresh breath for tech integration

Find great resources at the eThemes part of this page--thematically organized websites!

This professional development program provides the training and a framework for teaching content standards with technology effectively. Based in Missouri, it has expanded to a number of states including Utah, Nevada, and Minnesota. This program meets the NSDC standards for professional development and focuses on student achievement. Learn more by visiting the website.

21st Century Skills for Any Century

This presentation from Jim Moulton (Maine) is a fantastic focus on the importance of the appropriate use of technology to encourage student learning. Student learning. Project based learning can give students the authentic context for engaging students in the content to be learned. Also, if you have not yet invested the TCPK framework, do. Jim is right on target and every teacher should think in terms of possibilities the way he does.

Also posted on the Leading Together blog.