http://www.cogno.com/Weekly_Puzzlers.html

Please promote these wonderful opportunities to your students.

This sounds like a good opportunity for anyone wanting to work at a national park this summer and get a stipend for it.  You may need to hurry though.

I attended a wonderful presentaion today by John Kuglin on 21st Century Learning at our district’s leadership council.  Two of the main goals were to help understand vision of technology for our classrooms and also gain excitement towards advocating this technological movement within our schools and have our community respond favorably towards helping make it happen.

John gave a wonderful overview of the advancement of technology and how quickly it is changing.  We are at a crossroads in our educational system to help meet the needs of our digital native students who are part of a youth media culture.  From Marc Prensky’s paper he states, “Today’s students are no longer the people our educational system was designed to teach.”  We need to begin to think outside of the box.  Let’s rething the way the system has been operating for quite some time.  We may have learned a certain way, but we need to realize we now need to teach differently and utilize our resources more wisely.  It it essential that our district find a way to access the resources all around us and no longer think of a textbook as our only means to deliver material.  2 million minutes our students spend in high school.  That is a considerable amount of time to allow them to develop the skills to compete globally.

Yes, it will require money to bring the needed technology(i.e., bandwidth, interactive whiteboards, projectors, instructional laptops, one to one intitiatives, doc cameras, etc) into our classrooms so that is why we need to understand the need and be a strong voice to have all people see the need for our students.  Right now the money may not be there, so what can we doin the meantime?  How about beginning to take the time to get familiar with some of the Web 2.0 applications? 

To name a few from John’s list:

Wikis

Podcasts

Zamzar

Jing

Ning

Picasa

Blogs

St Vrain Virtual Campus

Google Earth  - download it and start playing  - WOW, the possibilities

Discovery streaming

eBoard

Learning.com

Webex

explorelearning.com

Let’s transform our classrooms and breakdown the walls so that our students and each one of us can access opportunites and experiences from all over the world.  As Thom Hartman says, “Tag, Your IT!”

Hello, 

Don’t forget to sign up for your free 2008 Earth Day E-Packet! This  year’s packet is focused on Climate Change Educational Resources. The  Electronic Packet will feature the best of climate literacy and climate change on-line educational resources. The E-Packet is great for  teachers, community leaders, non-profits and parents! If you signed up  for an E-Packet last year, no need to sign up again, you will automatically receive one each year! You will receive your E-Packet in early April.  Sign up

Benefits:

•      $1000  honorarium
•      Earn 4 continuing education credits at the Colorado School of Mines
•      A Colorado School of Mines Graduate student providing direct classroom assistance.

For Middle School

For High School

This is one science teacher’s attempt to influence the way we talk about the issue of climate change. Pass it on.

Project Tomorrow is seeking 100 educators to participate in Project TestDrive, a national research study on the classroom effectiveness of the online K-12 science, technology, engineering and math resources from the National Science Digital Library .

The National Science Digital Library, funded by the National Science Foundation, is a free, online library for science, technology, engineering and math resources with links to 1 million resources from over 500 unique collections.

Learn more about the National Science Digital LibraryThe National Science Digital Library (NSDL) was created by the National Science Foundation to provide access to high quality resources and tools for science, technology, engineering and mathematics education. Here are a few examples: ·  Middle School Portal highlights instructional resources for science, math and technology. ·  Teachers’ Domain at WGBH provides multi-media resources for earth and space science, engineering, life science and physical science. ·  ComPADRE provides resources for teaching physics and physical science courses.Click here to visit the National Science Digital Library

We hope that you will consider joining the project, and/or encourage others to join. To learn more about visit Project TestDrive.

Or contact: Amanda Ford
Program Support Coordinator
aford@tomorrow.org
949 609-4660 ext 12

Laurie Smith
Director, Research & Evaluation

Take a look at how some of America’s high schools are excelling and making change happen.