Dave Ruch, performer and teaching artist, is planning an event to coordinate the most K-5 classes online at the same time ever!. On Friday, October 30, 2015, K-5 teachers from around the world (replayed for those in time zones not conducive to joining the live event) will join together for a live-streamed participatory event where they will enjoy listening to Dave Ruch without leaving their classroom and meeting students around the world. At the end of October, also known as Connected Educator Month, will entertain, teach and inspire students and teachers with songs, stories, movement, laughter and learning duringthe first annual largest online gathering of students in K-5 classrooms. The session will take place at 1;15pm EST/10:15 am PST, Dave Ruch will appear on screen, live from his home studio in Buffalo, NY and lead students in an interactive singalong. The session will be 15-20 minutes so students can take a mini mind break, as I used to call it, and learn and enjoy watching the live performance. If you would like to join, you register to attend and receive the link to join the session in an email at http://daveruch.com/k5gathering/.  

The Texas Computer Educator Association, TCEA, is accepting nominations for educators in the following categories: One award recipient and two finalists are chosen in each of these eight categories: Classroom Teacher of the Year Library Media Specialist of the Year Instructional Technology Specialist of the Year Technical Support Person of the Year District or Campus Administrator of the Year Superintendent of the Year Technology Administrator of the Year Lifetime Achievement for the Advancement of Technology in Education To find out more information or nominate an educator that is a member of TCEA: http://www.tcea.org/membership/awards/.

PBS LearningMedia is hosting a virtual field trip where students can view part of the THE BRAIN media series on PBS and ask questions of the featured neuroscientist, Dr. David Eagleman. After the streamed interview with Dr. Eagleman, a short clip from THE BRAIN will be shown. The audience tuned in will be able to ask questions which will then be followed by a special showcase of resources for students and teachers presented by PBS LearningMedia after the Q&A. This is a great opportunity for students to participate in this virtual field trip and conversation. The following is from the emailed press release: Dr. Eagleman is the host of the upcoming PBS multi-part series THE BRAIN. The webinar is scheduled for Tuesday, October 13th from 1:00-2:00 p.m. ET, and is presented by PBS LearningMedia. This opportunity is conveniently timed the day before the national airing of this fascinating multi-part series on PBS. PBS LearningMedia invites classrooms to join a virtual conversation with Dr. David Eagleman, where he will decode the mysteries behind our body’s most complex organ and will share insights into his work as a neuroscientist. Students will learn how our personality, emotions and memories are encoded as neural activity and how the human brain continues to develop over the course of our lives. Classrooms will also get a sneak peek at the six part series airing on PBS on Wednesday, October 14th. Below is the webinar information with the GoTo registration link: WHAT: Uncovering the Mysteries Behind the Brain WHEN: Tuesday, October 13, 2015 1:00 PM EDT LINK TO REGISTER: http://www.pbslearningmedia.org/events/ For questions or concerns, contact: Allison Salzberg For PBS LearningMedia 617.585.5793  

Jimmy Fallon, host of the Tonight Show, is offering students an opportunity to be featured on The Tonight Show. The movie, ‘Bridge of Spies’, is soon to be released and this opportunity is a promotion for the movie. Students aged five to nine years old are encouraged to write a scene that Jimmy Fallon and Tom Hanks will act it out on the show. Two characters having a conversation must be part of the scene based on the title alone, "Bridge of Spies". Students will use their creativity and come up with their own scene and dialogue and based on the title alone. The movie is scheduled to come out October 16 so Tom Hanks will be on the The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon shortly before the 16th.The promo video is below. Take the weekend and have your youngster write a scene and email it to: kidtheater@tonightshow.com.

Google Expeditions are virtual field trips that teachers can participate in with their students. Currently they are looking for schools to serve as content partners. According to the Google information page: Expeditions Pioneer teams will visit selected schools around the world, starting with the United States, Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and Brazil. Each team will bring a complete Expeditions kit with everything the teachers need to take their students on journeys anywhere. The team will show teachers how Expeditions works and help set it up before class. Expeditions is a virtual reality platform built for the classroom. We worked with teachers and content partners from around the world to create more than 100 engaging journeys - making it easy to immerse students in entirely new experiences. Using Google’s Cardboard, a simple viewing device made out of folded cardboard, with an Android phone, students can experience a virtual excursion as an immersive, three-dimensional event. Reminiscent of the old stereoscopic View-Master devices introduced by Mattel in the late ’30s, Google Cardboard turns a smart phone into a cutting-edge virtual-reality viewer that gives an added dimension to virtual field trips." GOOGLE EXPEDITIONS IN ACTION According to an online article from The Journal, Kennis traveled to New York in December 2014 to help Google programmers develop an Expedition. The trip she designed was intended to explore cultural diffusion, or how certain cultural aspects spread from one group to another. She chose photo spheres, or 360-degree views, of various European landmarks to illustrate this concept, and then Google programmers built the virtual field trip from these photo spheres. In May, Kennis got to take her students on the Expedition she helped create. "My kids were really excited about it," she said. "I created a fake passport for them with their picture on it, and some information about where they were going." During the virtual field trip, she led them through the photo spheres and prompted them to reflect on what they were seeing. One of the photo spheres showed a city wall in Italy, and she asked her students, "What is the purpose of this city wall?" The experience "allowed them to tap into their kinesthetic and tactile learning style, because they were standing up and looking all around," she said. "It was the most lively and exciting day I have ever had in my classroom." "Every student was so engaged and so excited; they felt like they were actually there," she said. "It was amazing to see. It was a really powerful experience to see these students who are typically hard to motivate so immersed in something. That was probably the most amazing and rewarding part of it." BRING EXPEDITIONS TO YOUR SCHOOL Sign up to let Google know that you would like the Expeditions Pioneer Program to stop at your school. Google will try to visit as many schools possible, but spots are limited so sign up quickly. Google will notify you if they are able to visit. Sign up here to bring Google Expeditions to your school: i://docs.google.com/forms/d/1TOnK1hgk4rMweh-RNiK0iAucT_iMKz8wNp8cOGnq2eg/viewform

My understanding is that the Civil War started due to the treatment and history of slavery.  History textbooks in Texas say otherwise. Below is a newslist post from the American Federation of Teachers Texas hotline that shows the egregious errors regarding slavery that were discovered. I quoted the whole post below: Hats off to Pearland parent Roni Dean-Burren for publicizing via Facebook video an egregious misstatement in her son’s geography text, which described Africans enslaved and transported by force to America as just "workers." The errant text, from the McGraw-Hill publishing conglomerate, was approved last year by the State Board of Education along with many others. To McGraw-Hill’s credit, the publisher has acknowledged the problem and announced corrective action. On Facebook McGraw-Hill said: This week, we became aware of a concern regarding a caption reference to slavery on a map in one of our world geography programs. This program addresses slavery in the world in several lessons and meets the learning objectives of the course. However, we conducted a close review of the content and agree that our language in that caption did not adequately convey that Africans were both forced into migration and to labor against their will as slaves. We believe we can do better. To communicate these facts more clearly, we will update this caption to describe the arrival of African slaves in the U.S. as a forced migration and emphasize that their work was done as slave labor. These changes will be reflected in the digital version of the program immediately and will be included in the program’s next print run. The McGraw-Hill text may have been vetted for conformity to Texas standards, but those standards themselves leave much to be desired, especially around the history of slavery. For example, the curriculum guidelines imply slavery was not the foremost issue in our nation’s Civil War, even though the war was triggered by a dispute over the extension of slavery to new territories. A 2011 study by the conservative Fordham Institute said the social-studies standards were heavily politicized and all but ignored slavery and segregation. The McGraw-Hill mischaracterization of slaves as "workers" is regrettably consistent with the Texas social-studies curriculum document that the Fordham scholars found "distorts or suppresses" unsavory aspects of our nation’s history. The saving grace for Texas students is that their classroom teachers in social studies are able to supplement approved textbooks with additional, teacher-selected resources and instruction that meet higher standards of fidelity to the historical record. I knew about the controversy but had no idea how egregious the error was. I knew the textbooks were vetted for alignment to our state test standards. Texas doesn’t follow common core standards although they are somewhat similar to the CCSS and the textbooks were supposedly vetted to meet the criteria of the Texas testing standards. Suppressing items because they are not favorable to the nation’s history is inexcusable in my opinion. What else has been suppressed or distorted?

On October 17th at 5pm Central, I will be presenting "Connecting Classrooms via Global Collaborative Projects for the Global Education Conference! I have presented for the conference below and have created an improved presentation and hope you will join the new and improved session! If you are unable to attend, you can watch the recording. All sessions are free, open to the public and recorded. Join us as we celebrate ways you can collaborate with classrooms around the world or across your school district. We will have fun! Come for the fun and come for the door prize!

Today was my Global Education Conference presentation at 6pm EST/5pm EST titled "Connecting Classrooms via Global Collaborative Projects". Below are the resources shared during the session. Recording link: https://sas.elluminate.com/site/external/recording/playback/link/table/dropin?sid=2008350&suid=D.7D54BD45C9C94B75713AE90852DBDD Click here to open this binder in a new window.

What are the Eddies? The ‘Eddies’ are the Edublogs awards for blogs and bloggers. (I tried to think of something funny but nothing came to mind having to do with "Eddie"). Anyway, after eating turkey or after making preparations for Thanksgiving Day you can nominate some blogs or bloggers and honor the blog authors’ efforts. You can nominate a blog or blogger for an #eddie15 you can nominate here: http://edublogawards.com/2015/11/24/the-2015-edublog-awards-nominations-are-open/ Edublogs suggests a few tips on nominating bloggers or blogs: Nominate in as many categories as you want! Please make only one nomination per category You can’t nominate yourself Even if you know that your favorite has already been nominated, it is best to nominate them again Categories are competitive, and only the most nominated will make it to the voting round Share your nominations using twitter (#eddies15), facebook, Google+ and email The above was taken from the Edublogs awards site. Take a moment and make a few nominations. Make a blogger’s day or honor a small blogger sharing his/her talents with the blogosphere.

PBS and MIT have joined efforts to meet the needs and abilities of young children and enable them to learn to code. December 7-13th is the ‘hour of code’ week and this app would be perfect to use in an instructional setting with younger students. Also, students ages six and up can participate in coding activities at the Apple store during the week of coding for students. (http://www.macrumors.com/2015/12/02/apple-hour-of-code-workshops-2015/).  You can read more about the collaboration and app below from the email and press release I received. Features of the App: PBS KIDS ScratchJr Features Colorful Programming Blocks: Snap together the color-coded programming blocks to create sequences of actions that cause characters to animate and interact in fun and exciting ways. PBS KIDS Characters and Backgrounds: Create projects based on PBS KIDS shows and mix-and-match over 150 characters. Paint Editing: Create unique characters and backgrounds. Voice Recording: Use the recording tool to add sounds and give voice to projects. Story Starters: Find inspiration with in-app story starters! Each Story Starter features a different set of characters and is designed to encourage children to edit and complete the story however they’d like. Designed for kids ages 5-8, PBS KIDS ScratchJr enables kids to create their own interactive stories and games featuring their favorite characters from Wild Kratts, Nature Cat, WordGirl and Peg + Cat. By snapping together colorful programming blocks, children can make characters move, jump, dance and sing. In the process, kids will learn to solve problems, design projects and express themselves creatively. The app is free, and can be downloaded on the App Store and Google Play. Listed app features below, and the press release can be found online here.