I love creating writing tasks and writing exercises. Those tasks are especially great for teachers who are looking for more challenges and inspiration for their learners. And I have recently learnt a great new website/web tool from my dear colleague Berna Aslan to promote creative writing in  and outside the classroom. Writing Exercises provides free writing prompts and exercises to help you get started with creative writing and break through writing blocks for your students. You can generate story ideas, plots, subjects, scenarios, characters, first lines for stories and many more inspiring things. You can get a random first line to write a story such as ‘It was the trip of a lifetime, yet …’ ,you can get three nouns for your story; ‘honesty spider computer’, you can get a story title such as ‘The Secret Holiday’, you can character traits; ‘stubborn, considerate, idealistic’, you can get a random picture for a film plot, you can get random names for your stories as well. Also, there are many other generators that you can check once you get in the website. They also have a Children’s Writing Exercise website that is specially designed for children to use. This tool can be used in class to create a story as a whole class or in groups; or we can also assign our students with this web tool who would like to do more in English at home. This is also another website that we can recommend our parents who are asking for ideas to do with their children at home. Picture Source: ShutterStock

In a previous post, Learning in the Modern Classroom, I started highlighting our school’s attention to not only providing amplified learning opportunities, but also the creation of new forms of assessment to go along with these learning opportunities. I see a growing AND urgent need to develop new forms of assessment to support our pioneering teachers, as well our students. Learning in the 21st century modern classroom is changing. Many teachers are frustrated as the required or available assessments have not caught up yet with their efforts of upgrading to new forms of learning. How can we assess new forms of teaching with old traditional forms of evaluations?  Teachers feel trapped between wanting to upgrade and prepare students with skills for their life outside of school, but are dumbfounded how to assess the learning in terms that parents, colleagues (other subject areas), teachers (as their students rise to the next grade) administrators (& school policy makers), feeder schools, other stakeholders or universities understand, value and accept. Ex. A school is pioneering blogfolios in the K-8 classrooms and using student created content as formative assessment. The primary  feeder school is not interested in even looking at these assessments for admissions purposes (possibly for placement purposes once accepted into their school). We are in dire need of wrapping our minds around new forms of assessment, conceptualizing and developing these assessment tools, using them, advocating for them, sharing them and making them acceptable EVIDENCE OF LEARNING!   As a school, MJGDS is working on a Learning Target. Andrea Hernandez and Jon Mitzmacher have already written about it on their respective blogs. We used the Evidence of Learning in the 21st Century Classroom  by Galileo Educational Network as a basis to specifically  look at the assessment part of the Learning Target So, I am taking a closer look at the part of  "Criteria are established for Assessment". Teachers can’t/won’t be able to find a balance when blogging, tweeting, skyping, digital storytelling, building a learning network with and for their students, IF they continue to ASSESS in ADDITION to traditional forms. I want to share how we are starting to look at ways to UPGRADE & REPLACE traditional assessment forms. The classroom learning scenario (4th & 5th Grade) was a Skype call with Mike Fisher, I described in a previous post. Students were in charge of different jobs (true to the Digital Learning Farm concept from Alan November’s latest book "Who Owns the Learning?") I want to share our upgrade of assessment using tools such as Twitter, Skype and the Classroom Blog. One of the jobs was to be in charge of the classroom Twitter account during the Skype call. Students were to document the Skype call through 140 characters or less, using Twitter Grammar, Lingo & Twitter Shorthand, which we had made them familiar with over the last months by paper tweeting, class tweeting, etc.  I had developed the following guideline (as part of a Twitter Routine in the Classroom) of Lower Order to Higher Order Thinking Skills to classify different types of tweets. Using the above criteria, we were able to assess our classroom Twitter feed/ Twitter job holder. Our 9/10 year old students: are doing well in listening to conversation taking place via video conference are summarizing/taking notes in 140 characters or less. have a pretty good understanding of the Twitter lingo and grammar are starting to get a feel for a what a learning network means are reading and responding to others joining the conversation via Twitter are starting to apply notions of digital citizenship by citing and adding links are starting to add their own contribution I can see that we need to work on: moving beyond documentation to adding learning connections asking questions distinguishing between open and closed ended questions. add hashtags when apporpriate Our school’s Learning Target goes further into detail in regards to assessment: Assessment is integral to the learning and woven into authentic tasks, projects, and/or investigations. Assessment is ongoing and used by students to obtain feedback from a variety of people both inside and outside the classroom to improve their learning. Teachers have been including peer review for a while now as a valuable assessment for individual students. New forms of assessment though  call for "obtaining feedback from a variety of people both inside and OUTSIDE OF THE CLASSROOM". It is an active decision and action from the teacher’s part to reach beyond (amplify) their assessment of student work/learning and give feedback to students beyond themselves or their peers. To solicit outside feedback from experts (in addition to a few live comments and responses), I  published several screenshots of the 4th and 5th graders’ tweets on my blog Learning in the Modern Classroom. For me, there is no better way to solicit this kind of "outside help" than to ask the people on my Twitter network . Steve Anderson, aka web20classroom, an educator with over 57,000 Twitter followers and over 68,000 tweets to his credit ( giving him a certain degree of credibility in the social networking arena), left a comment on the blog addressing the students directly : Taking a look at your Twitter feeds, it is clear you have a grasp of communicating and collaborating using social media as a tool. You were able to summarize your call with Mike in a way that worked for 140 characters each time. And believe me, that is sometimes a tough task! You captured the essence of each part of your conversation with Mike and helped those not able to be there feel like they were. Cheers to you all on a job well done! Please feel free to continue leaving feedback for our students on the blog post.

If you like MadLibs kind of activities in which you write words to substitute for blanks in a story, before reading; you and your students will love Wacky Web Tales. The website gives you more than 50 titles that you can choose from. Later, you ask your students to fill in the missing words and parts of the speech. When you are done, the website generates the story with the prompts that you have written. It is sof un and easy to use. Here is one of the story that one of my students have created using this tool, enjoy! Super Salad To make the best book salad, you need fresh ingredients. The best time to buy a freshbook is from October to September. Go to your local market. Pick up one book and study it. The book should be happy and clean. These taste the best! Put six of them in your shopping cart. You will also need a pound each of carrots and pens.Next, you need to get the ingredients for the salad dressing. You might like appledressing, which tastes yummy on book salad, but you might also enjoy banana dressing. Pick out the five best fruits you can find. Take your ingredients home, and get ready to make your salad.Wash and dry each book thoroughly. Use your car to separate the parts of the book. Put the pieces in a large salad bowl. Next, chop the carrots and pens, and put those in the bowl. To make the dressing, mash the fruit in another bowl. Add a cup of oil and a hundred teaspoons of vinegar. Pour the dressing into the large salad bowl and mix the ingredients. Voilà! Enjoy your book salad.

This is Part Two of Assessment in the Modern Classroom. Read Part One here. Assessing students’ writing, thinking level , understanding, learning connections via a Twitter stream, did not end the assessment upgrade for this particular learning opportunity. During the same Skype call, we paid special attention to how students interacted with their conversation partner (Mike in this case) . We were watching their body language, paying attention to their vocabulary, ability to articulate an idea, their conversation etiquette and ability to follow a conversation and interaction. If working (and communicating beyond face to face interaction) on a global team is/will be a crucial skill for our students to posses, how can we assess the skills, support, coach and guide students? I am looking for ways to UPGRADE & REPLACE traditional assessment forms. Heidi Hayes Jacobs suggests in her book Curriculum21 to use an upgrade model which begins with consideration of assessment types, moves to content reviews and replacement, and then links both of these to upgraded skills and proficiencies (Jacobs, 2010, p.20) I started by taking a look at Andrew Churches Skype Rubric (pdf), but wanted to focus more on the actual communication skills during the Skype call and developed the following Taxonomy of a Skype Conversation  as a guide. Download the Taxonomy of a Skype Conversation as a pdf file. I believe we are on our way. We took the Twitter feed (Part One) , looked at skills students exhibited during the Skype conversation (Part Two) and now are moving on to looking at "blog post writing" as assessment (Part Three).    

I love storytelling and how they can promote creativity, imagination and inspiration in the classroom! If you would like to create and write your own stories with your students, here is a nice tool that you can use and suggest students to try at home as well! Scholastic Story Starters is an online machine that randomly generates a story starter for you. You choose your theme, write your name and grade. Then spin the wheel to get story prompts. Your story starter can be ‘Write three wishes of a giant milkmaid whose tears turn things to stone.’  or ‘Write a mysterious message to a pleasant lion that has a jet pack.’ If you can like, you spin smaller wheels to change different parts of your story starter.  The tool, then, lead you to start writing your story. You can choose to write a letter, a notebook, newspaper or a postcard. You can download or print your story when you are done. If you have time to inspire your students today, spin the wheel in class and get your story starter. Your learners are sure to come up with many creative stories using these prompts. Picture Sourse: ShutterStock

I believe we are on our way of taking a modern classroom learning opportunity and upgrading assessment forms to match new skills and new literacies while not forgetting traditionally assessed ones. We took a classroom Twitter feed (Part One) , looked at the conversation skills students exhibited during the Skype call (Part Two) and now are moving on to looking at "blog post writing" as assessment. Keeping a previously created blogging rubric in mind, we took a closer look at the blog posts written by the 4th and 5th graders during the actual skype call and edited and formatted after the call had ended. (If you have a minute, take the time to give the 4th and 5th graders ("outside of the classroom") feedback). There is not enough time to allow students to write the blog post, but still require them to write, in addition, in their paper journal. The "new form" of assessment has to replace the traditional one…. [Sidenote: not all the time... students don't have to only write on their blog, just as they should not only write in physical paper journals.] There are still more components to our learning experience. We have videographers in the process of editing the recorded Skype call. Yet another opportunity for an upgraded assessment. How will we give feedback? How do we assess these students’ artifact for evidence of learning. How well did they edit? Were they able to summarize important parts of the video clip? Were they able to tell a new story (showing understanding) from the clip? Is there evidence of growth in their fluency/literacy/ skills such as digital communication, connection, collaboration and critical thinking? Do we need a hub to collect these new types of assessment. Who is sharing? Who is curating? Who is disseminating?  

Here is a super cool and easy tool to create printable bingo cards for your students. Just go to this bingo card creator tool and then write the words that you want to see on your bingo cards. You csn write as many words as you want, you can also add a free space and even add a text there. You can decide on the number of the squares and how many different bingo cards that you want to create. When you are done, you can download and print your cards!  Instead of words, you can also write questions and students can ask these questions to each other as well. Enjoy! Picture Source: Shutterstock

I have been following the "Where the Hell is Matt" videos since 2006. I always thought the video is a great hook for students into geography. There are three versions available with a clear evolution of Matt growing as he travels around the world. From dancing in isolation in different locations around the world in 2006. Matt is doing "his thing". In 2008, he starts our dancing "his way" alone to then be joined by locals who are imitating his dance moves. Finally in 2012, Matt is embracing the locals, by dancing WITH them, learning their cultural dances and being part of the World.

"Amplification" in education is a concept, I am deeply committed to. In a recent post, Upgrade & Amplification Exercise and Checklist, I try to break down the process of amplification and make it more transparent for educators. What I did not explicitly include  was the component of another language to amplify one’s work, learning opportunities, reach, voice and ability to reach a global audience. Last October, I published the post Sharing- Creative Commons- Collaboration- Amplification, which in turn refers to  It’s All About Sharing and Collaborating, a post I wrote about a Russian educator who had translated material from Langwitches into his language in order to SHARE the content with his colleagues who spoke no English.  Alec Couros, told the Amazing Story of Openness and his diagram of the Networked Teacher as it has been translated into many languages now. It am tremendously honored, when my work gets AMPLIFIED into other languages, reaching educators, I would not have reached otherwise. Dico Krommenhoek  contacted me a few days ago via Twitter. I was thrilled to give permission, without hesitation, when he asked to translate the iPad App Evaluation checklist into Dutch. It gives me a sense of COLLABORATION across time, space and language, when I can "teach" via my work and materials without ever speaking the same language or meeting these teachers face to face. This is a beauty of CREATIVE COMMONS and an amazing story of openness (as Alec Couros puts it). Since then I have received several requests and permission  to amplify into other languages. I would like to share the work of the educators who took the time to amplify into their language.  This is how collaboration and amplification looks like Marlon offered to translate the  iPad App Evaluation for the Classroom into Chinese (pdf) Carrie Antoniazzi, as a conseillère pédagogique" with a french school board in British Colombia, Canada, translated and adapted the Are u Ready 4 Twitter into French  (pdf) for her teachers.  

I have been intrigued with the relationship of being skilled, literate and fluent in the Digital World for a while. We are focusing at school to look through the lens of fluency using technology as tools (e.g. using the iPad as the device and apps as the tool to achieve fluency), not as the end. I am wondering if the word "fluency" in the digital world, sparks the same thoughts or activates the background definition in other educators? I have heard others in the edubloggersphere use the word "workflow" instead of "fluency". Workflow is defined by Wikipedia as: The sequence of industrial, administrative, or other processes through which a piece of work passes from initiation to completion. The world "workflow" c-o-u-l-d work, but still does not sound right. What about a LEARNflow? The goal in education is for our students to learn, to become life long learners and do do so unconsciously, smoothly and [as] effortlessly [as possible]… I am still mulling over the semantics here… Your input is appreciated… fluency- workflow?- learnflow? Looking back at my train of thought, I started by looking at the flow between the skills needed to become literate in order to move on to become fluent. Then I moved along the lines of remembering what it felt like to NOT be fluent in a language. Words like cumbersome, painstaking, tedious, with effort and drudgingly come to mind. What feels so effortless to the fluent, is broken down in so many steps for the beginner… vocabulary words, grammar rules, exceptions, idioms… Most monolingual people might relate how it feels to TRY to learn another language, but they cannot relate to the feeling of being fluent in that other language. Most people might find a way to understand the analogy though when looking back at learning or teaching someone else how to drive a car. So many steps, from looking around you, to keeping your distance from other cars, observing and "feeling" the speed of the vehicle, breaking, shifting, merging, side & back mirrors, etc. As "fluent" drivers we don’t have to think about each step, it just happens naturally as opposed to the novice driver. Sports also allow for a good analogy by comparing the learning of skills, to knowing how to perform them and practice until  movements become unconscious and seem effortless. Moving back from analogies to what being fluent in a digital world means, I stumbled across a post by Christian Briggs titled  "The Difference Between Digital Literacy and Digital Fluency". He pointed out: Note that a literate person is perfectly capable of using the tools. They know how to use them and what to do with them, but the outcome is less likely to match their intention. It is not until that person reaches a level of fluency, however, that they are comfortable with when to use the tools to achieve the desired outcome, and even why the tools they are using are likely to have the desired outcome at all. Ian Jukes and Andrew Churches even wrote an entire book titled "Literacy is NOT enough: 21st Century Fluencies for the Digital Age". A presentation by Alec Couros titled Towards Digital Fluency, inspired me to visualize the following "flow" of what digital fluency [currently] looks like to me.   The following is the slide deck that puts my train of thought together and documents my understanding of  being skilled, literate and fluent in the digital world at this moment in time.   Digital Fluency from Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano

In another post, Embedding Visuals Into Teaching and Learning, I looked at ways to support our students’ ability to navigate a media rich world and "read and write" in that world. I shared how teachers could easily and quickly create visuals, that supported a question they wanted students to explore, break up long and monotone passages of text, review a concept discussed abstractly or make a real life connection. Wonderopolis is a fascinating site with great visual prompts for you to "hook" students into inquiry and further research. There are over 800 visual prompts from many many categories to choose from and even the option to submit your own "wonder to be included". (This could be a great activity for your students to prepare submissions) Each prompt has a video, vocabulary words, further resources and a Did you Know section. Try it out… this is a great way (something for all grade levels) to promote visual literacy, reflective writing and inquiry. The second  site, I wanted to recommend is Visual Writing Prompts, which have been categorized by subjects: Arts and Humanities English / Language Arts Math Science Social Studies Technology and by type: Creative Writing Descriptive / Expository Writing Dialogue Fictional Narrative / Short Story Functional Writing Personal Narrative Personal Reflection Persuasive Writing Poetry Quote Reflection The site is a wonderful inspiration of how to bring in visuals to "spicen" up or jump start students’ interest. Jon Spencer, one of the creators  shares important considerations in a post Ten Thoughts About Photo Prompts. Don’t stop by just reading about these two sites, take the next step and include visual prompts in your class… or if you already have.. take the next step and SHARE and REFLECT transparently. We need more examples from the classroom!

The picture above makes me smile… I see a group of Kindergarteners thinking, wondering, discussing, testing things out, collaborating, being proud of their independence as they are working with iPads. It was the first time, we "let go" with the iPads. Previously, we had iPad Centers, working with 3-4 students at a time or we took two buddies out of the class to record each other in a separate room. This time, we decided students were ready (I was not so sure, if I was ready) to give each 5/6 year old their own iPad in hand. My eyes were constantly darting across the room, trying to foresee any potential disasters or accidents about to happen in regards to the physical well being of the devices (I am happy to report that there was not one incident!) Mrs.Y.’s , the Kindergarten teacher, goal was to work on NOUNS. Building on the iPad skills they had developed in the previous weeks. We modeled for the entire group how to: find "nouns" in the classroom frame a picture so several nouns would be captured open up Skitch app using arrows to point to the nouns use type or handwrite the name of the object email their picture to their teacher to be included in their blogfolio Some students tentatively starting with one noun and then worked their way up to more than one in a second (or third, or fourth) image. They became more creative as they were wandering around the classroom to take  "just the right" image. Mrs. Y. projected her email program to the board and as a class they went through each screenshot that had been taken and mailed. You could really see the pride these students were displaying in their work.

Fifth grade students are getting ready to read the book "Jamestown" by Gail Garwoski. A stirring story of survival set against the backdrop of the founding of the first permanent English settlement in the New World. In 1606, King James I granted a charter to a group of London businessmen known as the Virginia Company to establish an English settlement in North America. In 1607, 104 men set sail aboard three tiny ships on a voyage to a new land. What they found became the first permanent English settlement in the New World-Jamestown. Among the brave adventurers who made the journey was a young boy named Samuel Collier, the page of famed Captain John Smith. How could we move away from assigning the traditional reading of the book (chapter by chapter), then writing a book report and possibly give an oral presentation in front of the class? How could we tie the lessons, delivery, supported skills and objectives NOT only to curriculum, but also to our Learning Target (based on and adapted from www.galileo.org ) We are looking to move towards competency in five categories: Learning Environment Learning is engaging Students are self-directed physical environment conducive to learning resources meet learning needs learning is social and interconnected Assessment comprehensive using a variety of techniques and resources authentic learning experience designed, developed and evaluated criteria are established for assessment Role of Teacher teacher as a learner teachers as a cognitive coach and guide teacher has strong instructional repertoire Amplification classroom is open & public Teacher actively connects to larger global audience Task authentic produces deep meaning With that in mind, we had a brainstorming session with our 10 year olds. What did they know about the early settlers? What did they want to know? What do we know? We started with the traditional KWL concept and upgraded to KWHLAQ. Could we compare pioneers and explorers who came to the Americas, the "New World" (with respect to the population who called these lands home and "their world" for thousands of years before the European came to "discover" it) and the "Digital World". What were dangers for the early settlers? What are dangers for cyber citizens? Were there double standards for the old and new world? Are there double standards for the analog vs digital world? By now, students are pretty independent in creating collaborative Google Docs to share with teachers and  their classmates to take notes. The concept of the Official Scribe from Alan November’s Digital Learning Farm is embedded and works naturally for our students. Below is the screenshot of the initial brainstorming session.   In our shared Google Doc, we gave students a prompt to expressed their initial thoughts about being an explorer in the Digital World and how it compared to being one in 1600s in Jamestown. We were not sure, if all student understood. 5th grade teacher, Shelly Zavon, wrote a reflection after our first meeting with the students. I especially like her blunt honesty,  that NOT EVERYTHING, not every class or lesson goes as planned nor well. We had to go back to the drawing board, we need to keep meeting every week to debrief after a lesson and tweak for future ones I am hoping that the Jamestown project will come together soon. The idea is good; I just need to find a way to help the students dig deeper and start thinking on a higher level. For some reason, the students don’t like to be challenged to go to the next level. They want to do everything quickly and get to the fun part, which hopefully in this case will result in a music video. With both of these projects, the students have had to move to a more advanced level of critical thinking (and accountability). I know this has been good for them, but is has been a grueling process for us teachers. I keep thinking, "learning is messy" and as Dory said in Finding Nemo, "Keep on swimming, swimming, swimming." How can we make the learning about Jamestown authentic? How do we connect the learning of the past and make it relevant to their present and future? It just happened that Google Glass shared a new video with the request for applications to becoming a GOOGLE EXPLORER! Two ideas came to mind: What if we were to ask our students to create a video with the same requirements as above (minus the last three points) to apply to become an Explorer , not for Google Glass, but for Jamestown. What would you do to become an explorer and leave for Jamestown? What if we were to ask our students to time travel with a device like Google Glass and take a video or pictures and they narrate/document what they are witnessing. It really is about imagination. Can we crowdsource imagination? Did this topic spark an idea for you? How could we help our students dig deeper? How do we make it authentic for them? Please take a moment to not only read this post, but to contribute to all of our learning. Thank you in advance.

Hyperlinks make the World Wide Web what it is. If links did not exist, EVERY web page would be a stand alone. Let’s take a close look at these "clickable thingies" I  like the metaphor of thinking of hyperlinks as the "wormholes", that transport us from one section of the universe to another, which is being mentioned on the Web Writing Style Guide 1.0 on the WritingSpaces.org site: While U. S. Senator Ted Stevens’ metaphor of the Internet as a series of tubes (2006) is inaccurate, we can reasonably think of hyperlinks as the paths (or if you want to get sci-fi geeky: wormholes) through which we travel across the World Wide Web. Click a link and almost instantaneously you will move to a new page within a web site or—seemingly magically—to some new website hosted half way around the globe. In fact, the importance of hyperlinks cannot be overstated; there is no web without hyperlinks connecting one text to another (or more often, one text to many). Hyperlinks make a word or a series of words "clickable". Traditionally they underline the chosen word or phrase and are recognized by changing the font color to blue. Themes and other formatting of website  can change the appearance of links. [Langwitches blog currently uses a theme that turns the "clickable" word or phrase to a bold format (not blue nor underlined).] Many educators struggle to make the transition from writing on paper, traditional student journals or worksheets to an online platform (ex. blogs or wikis)  for themselves and for their students. Ann Davis’ says "It is not just a matter of transferring classroom writing into digital spaces". I wholeheartedly agree with her. They struggle because writing in digital spaces is a different than writing on a physical piece of paper.  Most of them struggle, due to the lack of knowledge and practice  of reading and writing in digital spaces on their own part. Let’s become aware of the use AND quality of hyperlinks as we read and surf the web. Tip: Take a closer look at this blog post you are reading right now on Langwitches. You will see hyperlinks sprinkled across the post. I have included  different levels of links from the Hyperlink Taxonomy. Are you aware of the hyperlinks? Can you find and classify the different ones? There are three aspects of a hyperlink that I want to pay close attention to: the anatomy (the bodily structure) of a hyperlink the grammar & syntax (a particular analysis of a system and structure of language and the arrangement of words and phrases to create well-formed sentences in a language) the taxonomy (the classification) of a hyperlink   One of the faux pas, I often see in hyperlinked writing, are "grammatical  and syntax" errors in expressing a well formed sentence while including hyperlinks. links are not integrated into the flow of the sentence  (Ex. Click here, here,  and here…) link text is not descriptive  (Ex. Click here to see , Check out my latest blog post, Take a look at…) links do not clearly indicate what the reader can expect to find if they were to click on the link links are the URL (link address) spelled out, instead of embedded into the flow of the text sentence. (Ex. Take a look at http://langwitches.org/blog/2012/04/03/hyperlinked-writing-in-the-classroom/) Hyperlinking goes well beyond simply adding "clickable words" to an otherwise static, unilateral, linear, one dimensional and disconnected text. Critical thinking and strategy skills are needed to include "higher order hyperlinks. A digital writer can emphasize (point their readers) to a virtual place or connect them to a specific idea and concept by choosing what kind of link to place in their hyperlinked text. mix form and content to open up  different dimensions, making their writing non-linear, multi-layered and connected. use the hyperlink as a medium to convey her/his own train of thought   Download the Makeup of a Hyperlink as a pdf file. I am open to changes, additions to this first attempt to create a Taxonomy of Hyperlinked Writing. Please help continue to develop it by adding, questioning or tweaking.

I just returned from visiting my mother in Buenos Aires. I spent beautiful days of late summer in my favorite city. The city of my growing up… the city that continues to tug at strings to bring me back as often as I am able to visit. Below you will see images I took along my brief passing-through in order to capture the sights, smells, tastes and memories of the town I love… The Colon theatre… The Plaza San Martin… Dancing Tango en Recoleta… Empanadas… Riding the colectivo… On my last day, before riding back to the airport, I took a picture (below) of my mother’s street in one of the neighborhoods of the capital. Little did I know that the same street was going to be fully inundated by torrential rain within the next 24 hours… As I was flying back to the USA, rain was falling in record amount. According to the Buenos Aires Herald: The rain had started on Monday night, but it reached its maximum peak at dawn yesterday, with various sources reporting that between 140-190 millimetres of rain fell in only two hours, a record rainfall not seen in the month of April in at least 100 years. Once, I arrived, I heard my mother’s voice mail on my cell phone, that water had flooded her  building and had entered her ground floor apartment. The water rose to 1 meter high and as she descended from her second floor bedroom area in the early morning hours was greeted by floating chairs and other belongings. The power had gone out sometime during the night. Armed with a flashlight, she was able to signal one of her neighbors (and her young son) with only a ground floor apartment to come and join her on the second floor. The neighborhood’s stores, including the grocery stores, butcher, fruit stands, etc were all flooded. The cars parked on the streets were all flooded and some were floating. It is impossible to send household goods or clothing to help the people affected  due to shipping costs as well as post office (non-)reliance. I am planning on sending my mother money to help people most in need from her neighborhood. I know that Argentina and Buenos Aires, might just be names on a map for you, but the city and its people are close to my heart. If you enjoy(ed) the free content, I provide(d) on Langwitches, a donation (any amount)  would surely be appreciated. Thank you so much in advance! The following video (found on YouTube) was filmed in my mother’s neighborhood of Nunez. Update April 8, 2013: Thank you to all who have contributed to the fund. I will be sending over $800 to Argentina into my mother’s care to distribute to neighbors in need due to the flood. It will directly help in paying for cleaning up, disinfecting walls, floors and furniture that is savable or go towards the purchase of beds, appliances and/or food. Thank you again for your generosity. Muchas gracias!

Kathy Cassidy was so kind to extend a copy of her new book Connect from the Start: Global Learning in Primary Grades to me. Globally connected learning is a passion of mine, as regular readers of Langwitches can attest to. I was eager to read Kathy’s book, which is grounded in authentic experiences from her 1st grade classroom. From the first chapter on, the voice of "having been there herself", guides the reader through the worries of "How am I going to have the time?" and "I don’t know anything about technology" to the reassuring "I can do this!". I have met Kathy in person, as both of us presented at Alan November’s Building Learning Communities Conference in Boston. The same quiet, reassuring, "speaking from experience" voice comes through in her book. You will not find her ranting and raving to teachers about how they are not doing this, nor doing that, but instead shares: Why Connect Connecting with Skype Why we Use Blogs to Connect How to Blog with Primary Students Using Blogs as Digital Portfolios Connecting with Twitter Other Ways to Connect Open Your Classroom to the World Each chapter will not only give you the pedagogical reasoning behind using the selected tools, building of skills and literacies, but includes short tech explanations, embedded video examples and links to more in depth blog posts and articles. The first person, I thought of immediately who NEEDED to read this book was my daughter, who recently graduated with a degree in elementary education. Connected from the Start should be required reading for all new teachers, better yet, for all pre-service teachers. The book inspires, guides and gives practical how to get started advice. Although Kathy is a first grade teacher, I believe the book is relevant for all grade levels. Yes… including middle and high school. Teachers who have imagination and the desire to perfect their teaching craft will be able to tweak lessons learned to connect to their own curriculum, subject area and grade level. I also wholeheartedly agree with Dean Shareski, who in the foreword points out the best part of the book is yet to come: After you finish reading it, unlike many authors, you’ll not be finished learning with Kathy. As I mentioned before, she’s very gracious and willing to help. Yes, she’s a full time classroom teacher, but it doesn’t stop her from reaching out and sharing with whomever reaches out to her.  She continues to blog, tweet and post questions and ideas that engage her and other in her learning network. This book is not just talking about WHAT teachers could be doing with their students (even the younger ones), but Kathy models every day how to work, learn and expand her own learning network, which in return will benefit and connect her students. Press Release: Help Primary Students Connect with the World and Share Their Learning Using Blogs, Twitter, Skype and More! April 10, 2013 "Kathy Cassidy (is) a shining example of what one teacher with some grit, curiosity and passion can do to realize the powerful potential of computing and technology in the classroom. And she does it with 6 and 7 year olds." -Dean Shareski, Community Manager, Discovery Educa- tion Canada In her new book Connected from the Start: Global Learning in the Primary Grades, primary teacher Kathy Cassidy makes a compelling case for connecting our youngest students to the world, using the transformative power of Internet tools and technologies. The 120-page eBook is the first in a series of solo-author works published by Powerful Learning Press to support teachers and school leaders as they make the shift to digitally infused, inquiry-driven teaching and learning, fueled by students’ own passions and creative interests. Cassidy’s well-balanced text presents both the rationale for connecting stu- dents "from the start" and the how-to details and examples teachers need to involve children in grades K-3 in using blogs, Twitter, Skype and other social media to become true global learners. This highly interactive digital book - featuring dozens of color photos, 10 short videos, and hundreds of live links to helpful downloads and outside resources - invites the reader right into Kathy’s cozy and connected classroom, where kids are talking live with students "down under," swapping video with peers in Greece, and using personal blogs, apps and iPads to create digital portfoli- os that document their growth and achievement for parents, families and a worldwide audience. Connected from the Start is available from the PLPress bookstore for $16.95 in a PDF format suitable for desktop, laptop and tablet computers. To celebrate the release of our first fully interactive professional book for educators, Powerful Learning Press is offering a $2 discount thru April 17. Use our coupon code CONNECTEDKIDS to purchase Kathy Cassidy’s helpful book for $14.95. One week only, beginning April 10! Go to shop.plpnetwork.com/ connectedkids Tweet about Connected From the Start! Join Kathy and Powerful Learning Practice CEO Sheryl Nuss- baum-Beach for a one-hour Twitter chat on Sunday, April 14 at 7pm EDT. Use the hashtag #plpnetwork to follow along and participate!

During last year’s edJEWcon conference (a Teaching & Learning Institute for Jewish Educators, which  I help organize with Andrea Hernandez and Jon Mitzmacher),  we invited our Middle School students to attend our keynote session with Heidi Hayes Jacobs. We all watched magic happen, when students (without being asked) created their own backchannel and added their perspective to the conversation about THEIR learning. When it came time to plan for this year’s edJEWcon, I wanted to make sure we involved our students not just by accident, but  strategically and purposefully. I originally read about the idea of Speed Geeking for Professional Development from Kim Cofino on her blog Always Learning. She described the process in the post Take Your Faculty Speed Geeking. The idea is based on Speed Dating, where people get to "know/learn about" many different people in a short amount of time. (We talk a lot about motivating students, giving students a voice, engaging students in their learning. We need to talk less and act more.). The idea of Speed Geeking seemed to be the perfect opportunity and platform. I enlisted the help of our 4th & 5th grade Language Arts teacher, Stephanie Teitelbaum. We presented the idea of participating and becoming teachers to teachers during edJEWcon to students. Anyone interested in being part of the Geek team, was asked to submit a proposal/outline to demonstrate knowledge and teaching skills of a tool, app, program or device. Once a proposal was accepted, the students needed to get permission from their parents, since the session would take place during a non-school day and we needed a commitment that they would be brought to school at a given time. The "geek" was asked to prepare a flyer and guide (tutorial) to support their presentation during the speed geeking session. With the flyer/guide created, students were asked to present live to each other and us, demonstrating that they had thought through and practiced their geek session. We met two times during school hours to discuss, prepare and rehearse. Students brought their own ideas (ex. dressing up with nerd classes, wearing suspenders, creating nametags, etc.) Seven students were accepted into our Speed Geeking team for edJEWcon. Benjamin taught how to create a QR code with Goo.gl and what he uses QR codes for Samantha shared her favorite tool Frames for storytelling and tutorial design Eliana surprised everyone with Skitch and all its uses Rebecca (5th grade) mesmerized attendees with her wisdom of blogging and commenting Jamie was a hit by showcasing her expertise with iMovie on her iPad and by making entertaining everyone with her funny and witty personality Ariella took even experienced PowerPoint users by surprise as she shared advanced tips Rebecca (4th grade) shared her favorite program Pixie and in addition left everyone in awe with her ability of using a computer keyboard and trackpad up side down They had 5 minutes to share their chosen tool, program or framework that they, as students, use at school to create and demonstrate evidence of their learning. Attendees were encouraged to ask any questions they had. Each "Geek" sat around a table, ready to demonstrate and Q&A, before attendees moved on to the next Geek station.       Take a look at his short VIDEO to get a feel for the session. Below is a "paper tweet", as overheard from one of the session attendees. Take a look at the Twitter stream with commentary from other participants of the Speed Geeking session. A wonderful blogging conversation ensued on Ken Gordon’s blog, All the Rest Is Commentary: Getting Schooled by a Day Schooler, as he reflected on the Speed Geeking session, specifically on the "blogging table" with Rebecca: My wooziness owes itself chiefly to a child named Rebecca… who spoke to me, and a sizable number of JDS professionals, of her lucid, reasonable, and ethically minded philosophy on blog commentary. Rebecca knows things about blogging etiquette some people three and four times and five times her age don’t know. How does she manage this? Not only was Rebecca able to articulate, present, interact and amaze her audience, but she also practiced what she preached by leaving a quality, thoughtful comment for Ken Gordon (on HIS blog) to continue the conversation in digital spaces. My take-away from our Geek Session I felt extremely proud of each one of our students. I was able to stand back and enjoy watching them (not take a test, not perform) but just be. They were relaxed (with a little touch of nervousness during the first round) and OVERSTEPPED any expectations we had… and they knew it. We gave them space, an authentic audience, real world work and responsibility. Students were true and valued contributors to our conference (à la Digital Learning Farm). They was never the question "Why do we have to learn this?" The learning was embedded into the desire for a positive outcome. As teachers, we did not have to lament disengagement and lack of motivation. Students were on target, did not forget deadlines, demanded quality content of themselves (up until the morning of the session, I continued to receive updated and "better" versions of their flyers and resources) and continued to practice and rehearse on their own.  They showed ownership and demonstrated what I have been narrowing down as one of the most important skills of our times (aka 21st century): self-directed and self- motivated learning. Does this mean that every one of our classrooms look like this? Do all of our lessons, units, assignments, projects, assessments, etc. demonstrate student voice, involvement and authentic work? Not yet… but we (and most importantly the students)  have tasted the honey. I am thinking of speed geeking opportunities for my students: to parents at a retirement home to pre-service teachers from the local university feeder schools What do you think?

Our 4th and 5th grade students(9-10 year olds) have been working with Mike Fisher, co-author of Upgrading your Curriculum and author of children’s poems. The goal of their collaboration is to create an eBook of Mike’s poems with students’ illustrations. Once produced, students will work on marketing, advertising and disseminating the eBook. Over the course of the last few months, they: emailed skyped tweeted blogged worked on shared Google Docs in order to: introduce themselves to each other hold a conversation about their ideas and upcoming work document their work disseminate their work give and receive feedback Mike wrote about his experience up until now in detail on his blog post Contextual and Authentic Then, we discovered something. Something big. Because of the depth of instruction and the built in time to negotiate new roles for the students and the upgrade of seeing themselves as collaborators rather than passive learners, we struck oil! Silver! Gold! Students began to self identify interests that were related to their planned learning and lead us down paths of unplanned learning that enriched the designed project. I have been using the experience to take a closer look at upgrading assessment in modern learning environments. Learning is amplified by the amount of people who are collaborating, participating, communicating and creating. The learning is NOT about the technology tools, but what students can DO with them to learn in new ways. The learning is about an authentic tasks, that allows students to contribute in a individualized and personalized manner to make them realize that their work matters in the real world. Blog Writing Tweeting in the Classroom Taxonomy of a Skype Conversation In my recent post of  Students Are Speed Geeking at edJEWcon, I highlighted the need  and an example of exposing and involving our students in authentic learning experiences. There was another opportunity for our students to participate and share their learning with conference attendees, when Mike Fisher and our students were able to meet in person for the first time, as he was traveling as a presenter to Jacksonville. The session "Modern Learning", facilitated by Mike himself and Stephanie Teitelbaum, their language Arts teacher, focused, not necessarily on the students as teachers of teachers (as did the SpeedGeeking), but on the collaboration journey between adults and students, the authentic learning that has unfolded and will continue to develop for the rest of the school year and into next year. Session Description: Modern Learning Come and see what students learn When we change the roles and rules. Come and see what students do With modern learning tools. See the process and the product, The depth and the extension, The whole collaborative way we worked, And our new inventions. Prepare to be amazed and awed By our globally connected team. Join us as we launch the next phase Of our collaborative dream. Six students were selected to be part of a panel to explain the different jobs they held during Skype calls and to talk about the process of developing the idea of the eBook. Each student created a few slides in a collaborative Google Presentations to be able to visually share with the attendees the poem, their corresponding illustration and any artifact that showed their role in the collaboration process. At the end of the session, attendees were treated to a sneak preview of the eBook. All students were eloquent in sharing their learning, but one in particular surprised us with her statement of "It’s not one and done" when referring to the importance, care and quality of the work they are doing. She pointed out that the work is not done until it is done, which most likely will continue next school year. Take a "read" at the tweets below coming from the audience during the session: WE are on a path to experiencing authentic learning. I say WE on purpose, since teachers are experiencing this kind of learning alongside with our students. I don’t know about your experiences, but I don’t remember learning in this shape or form when I was going to school. I don’t remember authentic learning EVER coming up in my educational classes at the University. Steve Hargadon, our closing keynote speaker at edJEWcon, was talking about the need for preparing our students for entrepreneurialism. commonly used to describe an individual who organizes and operates a business Better yet, think John Dewey ("Education is not a preparation for life; education is life itself.") when we not only prepare students for entrepreneurialism, but letting them live and experience it in school. Our students are excited and ready to be in business. In the Book Publishing business! Now that the content is created, they are working on writing their resumes in order to apply for different positions that will put them in charge of leading or being hired to work under the Publishing Department How do we prepare/format the eBook or a Hard Copy? What are the terms of self-publishing services (Lulu.com/iTunes/Amazon, etc.) Financial Department How much will it cost to produce and publish the book?How much is feasible to charge for the eBook/hard copy? What will be cut for the author? The School? What are some projections? Marketing Department How will the product be marketed? Disseminated? Who is a potential audience? Should we organize a local book tour to promote the book? Graphic Designers How will we produce flyers to be physically distributed to our local bookstore, among the school community? Writers How will we write press-releases to be placed on classroom blogs, the school website? How can we promote the book through strategically written Tweets? What are other venues/platforms to contribute in writing? Guest blogging? Multimedia Team How will we produce multimedia (book trailers, commercials, etc.) to help advertise the product? If you have made it this far in reading the blog post. Ask yourself, HOW could you amplify these young entrepreneurs to LEARN through real life experiences? Would you be willing to consult with them, if you have any life experience in any of the departments mentioned above? Would you skype in for a few minutes to give them advice? Could you help the financial department in figuring out how much would you be willing to pay for their poetry book? Could you imagine a potential audience our marketing department could target? Are we forgetting a vital part of our business structure? Do you have any other thoughts or tips for us? (Please leave a comment) By the way… anyone still think this is about technology or learning specific tools, platforms or apps (Google Docs, Skype, Twitter, Blogging, Comic Life, Pixie, iMovie, Skitch, etc.)              

As the school year is ending, more and more educators are making decisions regarding their path for the upcoming scholastic year. Should they switch schools? Should they move into a different position? Should they leave the classroom and join an administrative team? Slowly, via social media, teachers are sharing their news of their upcoming changes. Some are excited, some are nervous, some are  devastated (if it was a non-voluntary change or cut). I am excited to be able to broaden my horizon and move on to a new country, culture, school and challenge. I  accepted the position of Academic Technology Coordinator at the Graded School, the American school of São Paulo, Brazil. My role will be similar to my current one, focusing on Graded’s Middle School . I was fortunate to have visited the school, when they hosted the Innovate Conference in January, and have met many of my new colleagues and administrators. So, if you are reading this and your mind is already turning regarding the global connections, collaboration and possibilities with a school in South America….keep the Graded school and me in mind for your upcoming global collaboration plans. The move to Brazil will take place in July…two months from now… The school is doing an excellent job for incoming faculty, by providing information about Brazil, the city, help with Visa procedures and a platform to connect  (a Ning) with administration and faculty already at the school. On a personal level, I have started: reading as many books about São Paulo and Brazil as I can get my hands on. using apps (Duolingo, Accela Study) to help me learn Portuguese (Having the app readily available on my phone and iPad allows me to  practice regularly and frequently and in small chunks). listening to vidcast and podcasts to learn about language and culture pinning to my new Pinterest Board about Brazil making a bucket list of new places to see making a list of essentials we will need to bring on our move taking inventory of the [American] things we can live without Two months will go by in a flash. Many of my current colleagues at the Martin J. Gottlieb Day School,  have told me, they will miss working with me (and I will miss working with them). I remind them though that our collaboration and being colleagues does not have to end with my move. It will be an authentic assessment if my work with them over the past few years has been successful.  If we indeed will be able to fluently "code switch" between being physical colleagues, who see each other daily face2face, to becoming virtual colleagues, dependent on our digital literacy to work with tools at our disposal that enable learning and collaboration across time and geographic distances.

Students need our guidance to use virtual platforms for ACADEMIC purposes. We can’t rely on their "so called" native status to know how and what to do. Just a few years ago, no one had heard of "backchanneling", nowadays, it has become main stream (although most people might not associate the term "backchannel" and "backchanneling" with something they might be familiar with. when you watch one of your favorite TV shows and are asked to use a twitter hashtag to interact with other viewers or the actors/participants…. you are participating in a backchannel when you are listening to a live political speech and are updating your Facebook status,  "liking" of commenting on someone else’s status… you are in a backchannel when you are passing a note (in the same room) or texting a colleague or classmate during a meeting or lecture… YOU are in a backchannel Definitions: Wikipedia Backchannel is the practice of using networked computers to maintain a real-time online conversation alongside the primary group activity or live spoken remarks. The term was coined in the field of Linguistics to describe listeners’ behaviours during verbal communication, Think Eric Think It’s a kind of parallel discussion, a collectively shaped comment on some ongoing conversation. An alternative channel, often with a different conversational modus. Lee Lefever It’s a little like passing notes in class- except via the Internet. Wireless Internet connections at conferences and lectures are allowing people to use laptops and other tools to communicate in real time during presentations. These communications occur in what is called the "backchannel" The more ubiquitous mobile devices, among the general population and in our schools are becoming, the more we need to be exposing, preparing, supporting and teaching our students to be able to use them: for academic purposes collaboratively with integrity and as a good digital citizen focused (but at the same time multitasking) "Backchanneling" academically is one of the skills that no one is born with. I have been thinking about, testing out and reflecting on backchanneling in the classroom for a few years now. Backchanneling with Elementary School Students Backchanneling-Movie Watching-Note Taking- Information Scribes Using a Chat Room in the Classroom At last year’s edJEWcon conference, quiet by surprise, our Middle School students, who were invited to listen in to Heidi Hayes Jacob‘s keynote, created their own backchannel to document and discuss what they were hearing and understanding.Everyone was surprised and impressed, as Mike Fisher wrote in his ASCD post titled "Strategic and Capable". At this year’s conference, we asked attending students to participate in a backchannel again. Part of the process of backchanneling with students includes the debriefing and reflection by going over the saved backchannel log. We used the Notability app on the iPad to color code some of our observations and bring attention to skills practiced, chat-iquette, grammar, understanding, connections made, value added, quality content and depth. What I learned: just because students backchanneled one year, did not mean they could transfer the skills nor step up the quality of contributions. (… we need to practice backchanneling more… not a one time event…give them a guide to support their growth in using a backchannel tool) some students didn’t understand WHY we asked them to backchannel. They could not articulate the purpose for the activity, nor pinpoint skills that were related to backchanneling. (… we need to do a better job at explaining to  our students the WHY of an activity, the skills we want to them to develop and the real world application) students shared with us, that they were not able to focus, in their opinion, they would have taken "better notes" by themselves without the distractions of the other students. (…we need to make it clearer for our students, that the value of a backchannel is the collaboration, the added perspective, the sum of different voices versus their thoughts and understanding in isolation) some students admitted that they were not happy with their keyboarding abilities. They could not type fast enough. Someone else posted "the exact same thing" they wanted to say. (…we need to encourage them to practice their typing/thumbing skills in their own free time) David Kelly, on his blog,  underlines that the value of the backchannel is in the sharing, not in the technology.  In much the same way that a person can not really appreciate the joy of riding a bicycle until they can do so without consciously focusing on balance and pedaling, getting the full value of a backchannel requires an understanding of what the backchannel is and how you use tools to participate in it. I went back to the drawing board to create a framework, a guide to help teachers AND students understand the value, purpose, skills and steps of growth. Purpose: The purpose of using a Backchannel with students is multifold. From collaborative note taking, to curating information, capturing quotes, gathering and Linking resources, sharing notes and adding one’s own perspective to others. Considerations: Presence: Active Substantive Timely Conversation: Respond to questions Initiate questions Make connections Digital Citizenship: Leadership Respect Network Evidence of Learning: Connections made Development of skills Quality of Content: Relevance Depth Added Value Skills: Language Clarity Spelling Full sentences In context Grammar & Syntax Multitasking Listening Thinking Writing Multimodal Curating Note-Taking Conversation Recall Remembering Restate Summarize Logistics Typing Backchannel Syntax/Format What Kind of Backchanneler Are You? Listener: I have a hard time multitasking and can only concentrate on listening to the conversation. Parrot: I recall and reproduce exact words that I hear Curator: I only restate relevant information and bring in selected resources Contributor: I question content, respond to and initiate conversation. I add my own thoughts and perspective.   Download the Backchannel Guide as pdf file. Further resources: Backchanneling in Education Langwitches Diigo Bookmarks; Backchanneling A Teachers’s Guide to Classroom Backchannels

During my visit this past January to the Graded School, in São Paulo, Brazil, I met Jamie Tuttle  Middle School Guidance Counselor. He told me about an incident at their International School and the response as a community: We found our world map defaced with several derogatory and racist remarks. The following words and statements were written on the map: It shocked our international school and we knew that something needed to be done. An 8th grade student brought up the idea of working together as a school to create a new world map. As the conversations about this idea grew, we felt that we needed to confront the issue of bullying and how racist and derogatory words can be very damaging to an individual and a community. We decided to confront these issues by creating a Wall of Intolerance. Jamie also shared with me their idea of documenting and sharing the occurrence and the process of "doing something about it" in order to not let a problem being hushed up.  The Graded community produced a documentary and I am thrilled to be able to share it with Langwitches’ readers. In addition, Jeff Lippman, the Middle School principal of the Graded School also created a flipped lesson on Ted Ed for the Wall of Intolerance documentary. This documentary shows the process that our Middle School went through when we discovered that our world map had been defaced with racist, xenophobic and classist graffiti. In a truly collaborative effort between students, teachers and administration, we confronted issues of discrimination and bullying and moved forward together as a community by tearing down hatred and building a new world map I am wondering how other schools could benefit beyond just taking the idea of the "Wall of Intolerance" as a resource or model for their own schools?  I am thinking… what if…. What if… we create a collaborative Wall of Intolerance? What if … we connect students across geography and tear down their Wall of Intolerance  (via Skype or Google Hangout)? What if … we crowdsourced testimonials/how to guides on how to grow from being a (passive) bystander to a(n) (active) ally. What if… we create a meme, a chain that is being passed on to other schools to add their perspectives, stories, solutions, actions, thoughts.

In a unit on Transportation, our Kindergarteners read a large picture book "On the Move!" by Donna Latham Students got so interested into learning about different ways people around the globe got around. They were even ready to take a trip to Venice, Italy to ride in a Vaporetto. Since our 5 & 6 year olds have gotten pretty good at using PicCollage on the iPads, their teacher Arlene Yegelwel, wanted to personalize another collaborative classroom eBook. She took the time to find over 20 public domain images of transportation methods they had discussed in class on Wikimedia Commons and sent them in one email to each iPad. Student’s workflow fluency looked like this: opened the PicCollage app chose one image of the different transportation methods decided how they could best place an image of themselves onto the picture asked a buddy to take an image of them acting out a particular position on the iPad edited the image by clipping the background resized the image to make it fit the ration of the transportation image rotated the image saved the image emailed the image to their teacher Mrs. Yegelwel, downloaded the images from the e-mail and then  imported them into the BookCreator App. She sat with each students to document their comment for the image. As a class, they also reviewed all the different parts of a book, such as title page, dedication page and credit page. We also had a short, age appropriate discussion about copyright and how we cannot just TAKE (steal) any images we find on the web. We talked to them about some photographers who release their images into public domain, which meant we could use them. So there was a special Thank You crafted to thank these photographers We could have stopped here, but the global component (transportation AROUND THE WORLD) begged to amplify what had largely taken place in the classroom only. We decided to involve students in crafting their own survey. Below you will find our collaborative efforts in formulating the title, description, questions and different checkboxes. Please take a moment to fill out the form for them. We will continue to accept responses until next Friday (May 24, 2013) to then tabulate and interpret the results. We also discussed how would we let people know about our survey? What if we stood in our school’s parking lot and shouted it out? How many people would hear us? Where would these people be geographically be from? I showed them my Twitter account and demonstrated how I was going to give a "shout out" for our survey. We then sat back and literally watched the first responses to our survey "fall into" the spread sheet.  Please imagine the wows, the oohs and the aahhs for each one, especially when the first ones from Europe started falling in. Mrs. Yegelwel pulled in the globe and showed location. We also explained why most of our responses seemed to come from the US and Canada. We quickly looked up what time it was in Australia and they "shockingly" realized that Australians were deep asleep while they were in school. I am asking myself the following questions. What are students learning BEYOND the reading of the original book in their classroom? How did we amplify skills and literacies, because we took "the extra step" of connecting the students to a global network? What transformative (not possible without the amplification) teaching & learning took place? Geography skills (We are looking up each location  on a globe. We are learning about states, countries, continents, urban, suburban, etc.) Math skills (We are using real authentic data. The results will be counted, sorted, organized and graphed) Thinking skills (Why are most people in the US using a car/van to get to work? Why do most people in Japan use scooters?) Global skills (They realize that we can talk TO the world, not just ABOUT the world) Network skills (What are networks? How does Twitter work?)  

Writing appropriate emails is part of being a good digital citizen! Students (even digital natives) are not born with knowing the rules and responsibilities. Just as they need to learn to answer and talk on the phone, they need to learn about e-mail writing in an academic setting (to their teachers, Skype partners, project collaborators, administration or their classmates regarding school business). Our third graders have been given access to their school email addresses. My colleague, Andrea Hernandez (@edtechworkshop) was working with students on formulating a Responsible Use Policy. From their discussion the following guide emerged. In the spirit of sharing and calling attention to ongoing,  embedded digital citizenship exposure, opportunities and discussions (rules, rights, privileges and responsibilities), take a moment to review these guidelines as an example and create you own guide with your students for their use of their SCHOOL email addresses. Download the guide as a pdf file

Will Richardson said: If you are not feeling a little bit uncomfortable about being a teacher or being in education right now, then you are not paying attention Working in schools and in education tends to put us in a "bubble" sometimes. We have our own micro-organisms of the way things work.  The way our school world works has not changed as fast as the world around us. We still hold on to models that are outdated outside the world of education. I am asking every teacher to TAKE ANOTHER LOOK AROUND. The sense of urgency is real and PERSONAL to me (as it should be to most of you!). You will mostly see my own granddaughter as the model in the presentation slides below! She is just a little over a year old and has all of  her "formal" schooling ahead of her. She will go through pre-school, elementary, middle and high school and hopefully, possibly, maybe to (a traditional) university (???).  She will have good teachers and not so good teachers along the way. Teachers, who will care about her and her learning and teachers who will only care about test scores. Will they prepare her for the year 2030 and the way the world beyond will look like? Will she be learning from textbooks only? Will her learning inside the physical classroom be unrecognizably different from her learning outside of school? Will her teachers allow her to use devices/tools to demonstrate evidence of learning instead of traditional methods of assessment? It is PERSONAL… when I look at my own three children. Below is a picture of my youngest daughter on her first day of school (with a traditional German school cone in her arms) and then again on her LAST day of high school. Notice the big, heavy textbook in her arms on the last day. Time past in a blink of an eye.. She went to a so called all "A" schools (Schools in our State are classified with a grade according to the results of the standardized tests). Her classes sported Smartboards in the rooms and her teachers were given iPads to use for their teaching. It did not change how she was prepared for life outside of school. It did not change how she was taught in order to pass tests, instead of learning how to learn in HER world. There was no collaboration beyond working with her classmates. There was never an authentic task beyond "getting the grade". There was no strategic intent to embed skills to expose, support and strength literacies beyond traditional reading and writing  (One of the teachers tried "blogging" with her English class once, but abandoned it quickly, since it was too much work to monitor all the students’ writing). If you have children in school…blink once and they will too graduate in no time. There is no time for baby steps in order to think about trying this or that. There is an urgency to take a good hard look around and take action. Take Another Look Around from Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano