Early Adopters Announced for Global Learners Project

Adams County District 14 is pleased to welcome 10 more participants to the Global Learners project. The latest group to be added are called Early Adopters. These ten were selected from 34 applicants to receive a significant infusion of equipment and professional development with the ultimate goals of engaging students and improving the 21st skills and competencies that the students are going to need when they leave our school system.
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The Early Adopters are:
Callie Brownlee (KMS-Math Coach)
Jon Fisher (Kemp-2nd Grade)
Tonia Johnson (ACHS-Reading)
Fred Kreienkamp (KMS-7th Grade Social Studies)
Jeff Lewis (Alsup-3rd Grade)
Jill Minzak (Rose Hill-2nd Grade)
Andrew Palmer (Central-Technology Teacher)
Wesley Robinson (Monaco-5th Grade)
Kelly Schwichtenberg (Alsup-1st Grade)
Emily Taylor (Alsup-4th Grade)

Engage Learners Visually with Digital Projection

Using a digital projector in the classroom opens up a whole range of uses to visually engage learners. From the obvious of displaying general computer applications such as spreadsheets, presentations, web based resources to specialty applications like Geometers' Sketchpad and unitedstreaming clips - bigger can be better. Most digital projectors like the Epson 3LCD can attach to video cameras enabling large screen viewing of almost everything, such as; science tools and projects, works of art and literature, student work of all sorts. Imagine a large venue "show and tell"!? What would you project on the big screen? Jim Moulton at Edutopia has some thoughts on this very subject.

For all you Global Learners that have a Dell Latitude D520 laptop check out this video to maximize your projection capabilities.

Struggle

Okay, I am having a hard time admitting it to myself but I think I am a digital immigrant. My dad had an apple when I was 2 or 3 and I used to play with word processors, spreadsheets, and data bases for fun way back before we had "the internet." So in taking in all of this info on what is really out there (the billions of pieces of information organized in truly a spiderweb format) I am having a hard time making sense of it. I like information that is delivered in an organized manner whether outlined with some heirarchy or the basic top to bottom and left to right style. That way, I know how to organize it in my head and store it for future reference. I am really struggling with "getting" all of this, or at least most of it.
I jumped with excitement when I heard that there is a book called Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and other Powerful Web Tools for the Classroom by Will Richardson and felt guilty to share it since it seems to go against what we are trying to learn, i.e. books are out, webstuff is in.
My question is this: if I learned certain ways to take in data and organize it so that I can have this "background knowledge" that is so important for the capacity to learn, what are today's students doing? Are they struggling to make sense without the filing system in their heads that I learned? Are they doing just fine and it's me who is stuggling to make sense of it because it is so different from my experiences?
Ruby Payne's book references children who were barely read to have not learned to collect data in an organized manner, i.e. top to bottom and left to right. So without that system, even walking into a busy room causes their eyes to dart around and they could miss important observations, not to mention be overwhelmed. This is how I feel when I look at some webpages. Are today's students who are moving away from books going to miss that basic data collection/processing system that we all take for granted? Does this need to be directly taught at some point? Does anyone know of any references (either books or websites) that address helping students make sense and organize data in the digital formats of 2007?

Global Classrooms: Global Voices Redux

A previous post focused on Global Voices, the new web presence for shedding light on non-traditional media worldwide. Global Voices offers many useful tools for keeping track of what is happening in other countries. In fact, these tools allow you to track countries or categories by subscribing to pages (RSS).

The available tools at Global Voices could have enormous impact on the classroom. If in your classroom you study countries (in a unit or lesson) or topics (e.g. diaspora, ethnicity, or film) you should consider exploring this site. For example, if each student in a classroom is assigned a country (e.g. Romania, Lybia, China) to track throughout a course. This might include reporting on a variety of topics and culminating with an oral report. At Global Voices students could use a RSS reader to track what is being organized on a daily basis. That way students could be aware of current events from the perspective of the new media (e.g. bloggers, etc...). In addition, students could include headlines in their blog or website from their region or on their topic (see the headlines on the right pane of this blog for an example).

What other possibilities could you see for RSS and Global Voices? What classes would this work in?

Global Learning Takes off in ACSD 14

Today, the Global Learners Initiative has taken off in school district 14. The team has launched day one of the professional development for teachers at Kearney Middle School and Adams City High School. Cheers to Dave Tarwater and Joe Miller for their phenomenal delivery of this rich content to our outstanding teachers.
Joe Miller is in the midst of an excellent presentation outlining the parameters of the project, and I'm convinced there's both genuine excitement and trepidation among our teachers. While people are thrilled to be handed a new laptop and several other classroom tools, there is anxiety over the expectations to use the tools properly.
FEAR NOT, teacher friends! The Global Learners Team is here to help. We'll be with you every step of the way. As Dr. Miller has stated, you won't be expected to blog today, and maybe not even tomorrow, but you will find that it's a simple, useful method of communicating with your fellow students, teachers, and world citizens. As a matter of fact, I've just added this post to the blog while sitting here listening to Joe Miller with my ears and typing with my hands.
We're very pleased to see you here today. Hats off to you for being a part of the teaching revolution in Adams County School District 14. Welcome to Global Learning in the 21st Century!

Joost Invite Available

We have some invitations to the Joost application that is currently in Beta testing. If you are not familiar with Joost (www.joost.com), it is a web based application that will allow you to watch TV over the internet and also allows users to discuss the show while watching the show. The TV channels are provided and maintained by Joost and will include National Geographic, CBS and other channels. My guess is that within months your students will be familiar with Joost, so this is your opportunity to become familiar with this technology before your students do.

If you would like a Joost invite, please respond to this post with a brief summary on how you might be able to utilize this type of application to engage your students.

Global Voices

Global Voices is a non-profit media site that aggregates the "global conversation" at a website. The goal of this project is to bring to the forefront places and people other media often ignore, but "new" media like bloggers pay attention to. The idea is that a reader can go to one website to take the pulse of international affairs as measured on the ground. Global Voices has a drill-down feature for searches by region, country, or topic.

What do you think the possibilities are for this new media? Could students use this in Social Studies? In Language Arts? In Math class?