Can Google Hear Us? is a blog begun by a group of innovative educators who see the need for a search engine dedicated to educational use. I heartily agree that such a search engine would be invaluable to students and teachers.
Please visit their blog to read more and contribute your thoughts.
One of my hobbies is gardening. I love to watch my flower garden as spring arrives; the drabness of winter is replaced by a lush green and then various hues as pasqueflowers, daylilies, yarrow, butterfly bushes, bee balm, and purple coneflower (among others) paint its surface.
Each year I purchase hanging baskets to adorn my front and back porches. Their very presence not only calms me, but brings me joy. Plants are nature’s way of reminding me that nothing lasts forever. Their beauty is temporary and requires nuturing.
South Carolina is in the second year of a drought. This June has also brought us more than our usual share of extremely high temperatures. Heat, combined with the lack of rain, stresses my plants. They will quickly remind me of this, too.
My hanging baskets and potted plants have required daily watering the last few weeks. On Wednesday, as I prepared to head to Greenville to attend the Upstate Technology Conference, I forgot to water one of my hanging baskets. When I arrived home Wednesday evening and went outside to check on my my flowers, I found the basket of purple million bells dry and shriveling. I quickly brought it up on the back porch to water it and shield it from the relentless sun it receives by the pool.
As I watered it and pinched off dead shoots, I realized that educators are like those beautiful hanging baskets. When the school year begins, we burst forth from our dormant season and are eager to meet each day. As each week passes, we tend to lose the enthusiasm with which we started the year as we settle in for the growing season. The year quickly heats up as we are enundated with papers, duties, meetings, lesson plans, and more.
If we do not nuture ourselves with professional development, we tend to get stuck in routines and our grand plans to make this year different shrivel up. Every educator who has attended a convention or conference realizes the immeasurable value it provides. We return from these sessions invigorated and ready to try newly learned techniques or tools.
However, most educators do not have the opportunity to attend such conventions or conferences often. That is why it is imperative that we take professional development into our own hands. We must seek ways to learn that do not require professional leave.
Each of us needs a mentor (or mentors) to inspire us and encourage us to continue to challenge ourselves. Today’s educators have opportunites for professional development that did not exist when I first began teaching. The internet provides us limitless possibilities to improve our understanding of our subject matter and the needs of today’s students. Some examples:
I am, of course, preaching to the choir here. If you are reading this, you have already taken responsibility for finding ways to continue your professional development beyond graduate courses, workshops, and conferences. You are to be applauded for this, but unfortunately, you are in the minority.
I challenge you to encourage the educators in your building and district to do the same. Tend to the garden where you bloom and your students will benefit. If you already have ways in which you do this, I would love to hear about them.
Today was the first day of the Upstate Technology Conference sponsored by the Greenville County School District. J.L. Mann High Academy is hosting the conference in their new and spacious facility.
I attended the keynote address, given by Ewan McIntosh entitled “Publishing, Play, Purpose: Three Elements that Must Change our Teaching and Learning.” He addressed the state of U.S. education by renaming No Child Left Behind as “No Child Moving Forward.” Funny, but it does point out a major weakness in our system: we are so concerned with mastering material to pass a test that we forget that the process of learning should be our focus. He shared that in Scotland, their students are not tested before age 13. Interesting.
I also had the opportunity to attend several hour long sessions. My favorite today was “Creating Virtual Field Trips with Google Earth.” Sandra McLendon accomplished quite a bit in under an hour. She not only introduced some newer features of Google Earth including Google Sky, but also taught a roomful of educators how to create placemarks, insert hyperlinks, insert images, and how to apply overlays. The possibilities of using Google Earth in the classroom boggle this mind.
I attended a session at the 2008 SCASL Conference on Google Lit Trips, but was overwhelmed with the information there. With the hands on approach that Sandra McLendon took today, I feel like I have a grasp of how to start a virtual field trip using Google Earth and am excited about it!
Two helpful sites that were shared during this session:
Google Earth Resources for Educators This site includes information covered in today’s session. Also included are tutorials, files, and helpful links.
3 D Warehouse Searchable database of 3 D images, many of which are ready to open in Google Earth.
Although I would love to create lots of virtual trips and other lessons using these resources, I realize that I am limited by time. So, like any other time-deprived educator, I googled the topic and came across some great sites:
Google for Educators This site contains ideas for using many of the available Google tools including Google Earth.
Juicy Geography A small collection of Google Earth lessons.
Constitution Trek (kmz file)
Google Earth Community You must register to use this site.
Google Earth Lessons This site has how-to’s and a variety of lessons, both teacher controlled use of GE and student controlled use of GE. Definitely worth checking into.
Postcards from the Past Great lesson using historic photographs, a digital camera, and Google Earth.
Who can help me by sharing other Google Earth lesson sites? Please add your favorites in your comment. Thanks!
Roll out those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer
Those days of soda and pretzels and beer
Roll out those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer
You’ll wish that summer could always be hereLyrics by Charles Tobias
Nat King Cole was one of my mother’s favorite artists so we listened to his records often. The lyrics to this song always come to mind when the last school bell rings for the year.
As an adult, I often long for the lazy days of summer freedom I experienced as a child.
These days included:
ice cream trucks
running through sprinklers
trips to the neighborhood swimming pool
catching lightning bugs in Duke’s mayonnaise jars
Vacation Bible School
Myrtle Beach
weekly trips to the public library
picnics with fried chicken and deviled eggs
July 4th fireworks
popsicles
home-churned peach ice cream
watermelon
tag
softball
Marco Polo
backyard cookouts
star gazing
skimming stones across a lake or pond
As a product of the 1950s, my childhood memories will vary greatly from those of my grandchildren. Will they remember long summer afternoons of playing video games, surfing the internet, or watching television? I hope not.
I am a self-professed technology junkie. I will spend many hours this summer learning more about technology tools to use in the classroom, but I don’t want my grandchildren’s lives to revolve around technology. Summer was a magical season for me, and I want it to be so for my grandchildren. So, I will break out the sprinkler, vacuum the pool, save the mayo jars, and gaze at stars. I will grill out hamburgers, use the electric churn to make peach ice cream, and play games of tag until I fall down, exhausted. I will create bubbles with wands, help little hands master the craft of skimming stones, and build sandcastles.
What memories will summer hold for your children and grandchildren?
image courtesy of adwriter, used through a Creative Commons license
For more than fifteen years I have been using booktalks to encourage teens to try new books and authors. Booktalks work, plain and simple. Advertising a book sells it just as advertising shampoo or jeans sells them. Presentation is everything in grabbing a reader’s interest.
So last spring, my media center showed the book trailers produced for the 2006 Teen Book Video Awards during the kick off for our READissance program. The three trailers included the one above as well as The Book Thief and How I Live Now
Not only did these beautifully crafted videos spark student interest, they lead me to purchase two of the titles for our collection. As our students raptly watched the videos, I thought, “Why not have our students create book trailers?” This idea never came to fruition as life, work, and grad school seemed to crowd out my fleeting moments of free time. Luckily the world was not depending on me to provide new book trailers.
How else can my media center increase the use of Web 2.0 tools for book advertisement?
Joyce Valenza, media specialist extraordinaire, explored the use of book trailers, vodcasts, and podcasts in October 2007’s issue of e-Voya. Her article, entitled “Booktalking 2.0″ provides links to many professionally and student-produced podcasts. These can be used in conjunction with your already prepared booktalks to encourage your students to read.
Now, another set of book trailers have been honored by the Teen Book Video Awards, doubling our small arsenal of high quality book trailers to entice readers to try new books. Many other book trailers can be found on video hosting sites like Youtube, Teachertube, and Google Video.
Here is another trailer for a newly released young adult book that looks interesting.
The Adoration of Jenna Fox (from Henry Holt and Company)
