Geography Bee Champ-Remembers places because every place has a story

Check you the front page of the Omaha World-Herald Living Section today, Saturday, June 7, 2008. This year's National Geography Bee winner is and 11-year-old boy from Lincoln. It is the cover story on the Living Section of the paper with a big picture and article. The caption under the picture says, "Every physical place in the world, says Aksha Rajagopal, has some kind of story." That is one of the ideas we were just studying about and one of the chapters in the book we read. He talks about one of the ways he remembers is by stories that go with the place and name.

Articulation, Participation and Citizenship-Podcasting as a Scaffold for Signifcance

It is important to keep the conceptual mind (L-Brain) but with more emphasis on the creative (R-Brain). Some of the roadblock to the shift to more emphasis towards creative: financial, NCLB, assessments, changing mind-set of parents and students, changing my own mind set. Holistic-Will the components of a one-room school will come back. Now we have the means for mass customization. Some of the smallest changes we make may have the biggest impact on our students. When developing a podcast: 80% development and 20% production for time spent.

Empathy

Three websites that let you test your empathy quotient:

EQ website: tinyurl.com/dbsd8

Spot the Fake Smile: tinyurl.com/2u7sh

Mind in the Eye Test: tinyurl.com/ckrj3

Six Ways to Teach for Independent and Higher Learning

Presentation by Katie Morrow. Things we should be aware of to change the way I teach: 1. We must resist the temptation to tell. Giving students content without generating any interest in the material is like having only one side of a piece of Velcro--it just doesn't stick. 2. We must stop teaching decontextualized content. Context=Frame of Reference. 3. We must stop giving kids the final product of our thinking. 4. We must make a fundamental shift-problems first, teaching second. Transform with Role-Play. Ex. Website for business--animated intro. Dept. of Environment-Fish dying. Magazine Editor-edited submitted articles. 5. We must progressively withdraw from helping students. "Sucess is a lousy teacher because it seduces people into thinking they can't lose." Bill Gates. 6. We must reevaluate evaluation. Is the tail wagging the dog? Food for thought!

Julie and Sarah-Symphony Presentation

Boundary Crosser, Inventor, Metaphor Maker: we need to be able to mesh all three relationships. Ways to develop symphony: Listen to actual classic symphonies, look at magazines you never read, draw, keep a metaphor log, lookk for soltions in search of problems, create and Inspiration Board, read suggested books, brainstorm, look for negative spaces.

Dicky Brown's Presentation-The Whole New Mind: the Six Senses

The six new senses are: design, story, symphony, empathy, play, and meaning. Design is one of the new senses. Design is not fluff. Everything is designed now for the masses, not just the rich. To succeed in the marketplace, companies need to pay attention to design.

Cheryl Lemke-It's Different Learning...

Collaboration gets kids talking to each other. Research (Johnson & Johnson) shows that higher proficiency students talk a lot more than lower functioning students. Attention should be paid to how students are grouped. She suggests putting students that are operating at a similar level together. There must be a commitment from all in the group to work with the group. There needs to be a shared work space. It can be a piece of paper or a whiteboard or... The student's need to feel safe to explore and take a risk. There needs to be a balance of socialization and getting the task done. I would like to hear more.

Becky and Teri-Storytelling Presentation

I enjoyed this presentation. Doing the presentation about storytelling by telling a story emphasized the point of how important storytelling is.

Web 2.0 Tool Promo Bubbl.us

This was my promotion for Bubbl.us. This is a lot like Inspiration but with more web capabilities.

Bubblus: Bubbl.us

Conceptual Age-Presentation by Kaye Appleby

The skills that humans can provide that computers cannot: empathy, spirituality, art, mobile sculpture, emotion, compassion, laughter, social dexterity, imagination, joyfulness, humor. Master's of Fine Arts are hotter credentials than MBAs. Only 4 to 10 percent of carreer success is based on IQ. The most significant change of the Conceptual Age might be occurring outside the office--and inside our hearts and souls.

Abundance, Asia, and Automation

Presentation by Brian Mohr. Why Right brains will rule the world. Traditionally prestige and power positions were L-brained. Tests like ACT and SAT tested L-brained activities. This author believes that because the world marketplace is changing that power positions will be held by R-brained. The standard of living have gone up. People are more interested in aesthetic quality. Creativity in marketing will become determined. The standard of living in Asia is improving for many of them. Education has improved. More Asians are remaining in their home country. Many of American jobs are being outsourced to Asian countries. Thirdly, just as the Industrial Revolution changed the skills employers needed, computers will be able to a lot of things that humans now do. Education needs to train people to do things that computers cannot do.

Google

I think off all the things we have covered so far, the options available through Google are the ones I would like to explore the most. I also want to download the new version of SmartBoard and start exploring what is available there.

Kevin Kay's Lecture

One thing that Kevin Kay said that bothered me was that student's don't need to know the state capitals. If it is something the student can Google, they don't need to know it. Throughout the presentation he emphasized the need for critical thinking. How can students do critical thinking without a base of knowledge. If you look at the hierarchy of learning, the basic level is knowledge. Only after that level is reached can a student go on to higher levels. Another question I have, if the student doesn't need to know basic vocabulary because he can Google definitions, what will their reading level be?

Six Word Stories

March to own drummer. Few regrets.

Thoughts of the Ken Pay 21st Century Skills Framework Presentation.
Strategies for school districts:
1.Develop a Consensus-I think our school district has started the dialog and is well on its way to developing a consensus.
2Take a Self-Assessment-21stcenturyskillls.org-place to take a quiz to see where I am personally
3Upgrade Professional Development-O'Neill is doing a super job of making professional development available to teachers. So much is available locally and teachers are encouraged to attend workshops and conferences. The opportunity is there.
4. Imbed 21st Century Skills in core subjects-I think the new biology books and physcial science books do a really good job of imbedding technology into the curriculum. With every student having 24/7 access to the MacBook it becomes a matter of rethinking how one teaches.
5. What can your school or district do? Upgrade Assessments. Use a full range of assessments, including high-stakes and classroom assessments, to meashre 21st Century Skills.
Ex. Collegiate Learning Assessment, Student Portfolios, Senior Year Projects. I have a long way to go to improve on this item.
6. Focus on reforming high schools.-I think we touch on this from time to time. Solving the space shortage would help.
7. Collaborate with Community-Based Groups.-Collaborate with youth development and after-school programs on a comunity strategy to pursude 21st century learning
8Collaborate with the business community-Develop an agreement on skill outcomes and ask local businesses to provide career awareness and internships that offer opportunities to learn beyond the classroom.-I think this is an area that we all can work on.

I just finished part of the Google for Educators Tour. There is so much more to Google than I realized. After about 5 hours of class it seems almost overwhelming. There are so many things to choose from, not only on Google, but on other sites as well.

Technology Learning in the 21st Century

This is a one week class being offered by Doane College in O'Neill. It should be a week filled with new adventures in learning using my MacBook.