CyberSmart – Jim Teicher
Shows video of laptop usage in Senegal – can we scale this up to increase opportunity for many more children? Money issues. No electricity ... therefore laptop usage relies on batteries and downloaded programs because no internet connectivity. Need to appreciate that there are other priorities in these countries besides computer usage ... day to day living and getting to school even [walking miles].
http://cybersmart.org/africa
http://cybersmart.org/africa/storytelling/
http://cybersmart.org/africa/storytelling/gallery
Working with ePals to turn into a collaborative learning experience. Lots of reasons why we should want to bring western learning to muslim Senegal, NW Africa. Partnership with Millennium villages – their mandate is to build economic models for sustainability and scale etc and so CyberSmart adding focus on ICT projects, using strategies and technologies which don’t leak money. Professional development will be key – will use Moodle for grassroots lesson creation and improvement [so not all resources will come from the capital of Dakar].
MS Multipoint – an extension to Powerpoint which enables a mouse to provide a voting/answering capability. Multi-choice, fill in the blanks etc used in combination with MS Mischief - – scalable sustainable whole class pedagogies.
- Astra projector. Very portable, plug and play etc.
- Livescribe
- Text messaging – no charge to receive texts or calls in Senegal
- Reading pens
Howie DiBlasi – 21st C Classroom Projects Howie's web site ..
Teacher’s experience of ePals – a week after seeing a presentation on ePals, Beth Stills contacted ePals and set up profile – she heard from schools all over the world and she set up international connections for her students, which saw best results on a one on one basis, particularly for female students. Not used ePals in last year but thinking about new projects. For example, she might set up projects on a wiki and have international students comment on those projects.
Over the last year, she has taken the time to build a PLN [personal learning network] and made connections all over the world – helped her to appreciate the value of international collaboration for her students. See her blog - for her success in a ‘Send a Newbie to NECC Project’.
Vidyo - copes with internet packet loss during large scale interactive video conferencing.
Zach’s journey – see Washington Post article
Kiva – micro loan programme Howies projects use the following technologies ...
- VoiceThreads
- Google Docs - can invite 250 people to collaborate but only 12 can work on a document at any one time.
- Podcasting, visual literacy
- Photostory
- Blogs, Wikis
- MemoriesOnWeb
- Ning – see this one about tools for the classroom
- Voki - a free service allowing you to create personalised speaking avatars! But watch the terms of use – not for under 13’s!
- This is My Country - projects about my country
- Journey North
- FlipCAM, publishing a project on the internet.
Some ideas ...
I Believe – take students through writing a belief statement. Engages people in writing, sharing, discussing core values etc. Based on the This I Believe initiative.
My hero – use a computer to access the internet and find and read stories on the My Hero website. See Gabe O’Neill’s website - www.kidsareheroes.com.
My Town – Our Town [James Taylor] – Small Town – students obtain lyrics from these songs and do research on their own town and its history. Students make contact with the songwriter to ask for permission to use lyrics to the song. http://www.lyricsfreak.com and then compose a photographic sequence about their home town, using Photostory or Memories on the Web to put their story together.
The Best Part of Me – students identify a positive physical feature of themselves and write a descriptive poem about it .. students work in pairs to take part in an online writer’s workshop.
Video project – 5 [really 6] frames –
Good story has characters in action with beginning, middle and end.
1- Title – words or photo with words
2- Establish characters and location
3- Create situation with possibility of what might happen
4- Involve characters in situation
5- Build to probable outcomes
6- Have a logical and surprising end
Could bring music or narrative into it also.
Six words
Authors to sum up their lives – single words or put in the context of a short sentence. Use VoiceThreads or Google Docs for collaboration.
Nancy Charron – Chelmsford Schools- Internet Pen Pal programs
Research study on impact of pen pal approach to writing. Teachers used project to make required writing tasks authentic.
US children fascinated by differences in date format, time zoning [ie it being Wednesday and Thursday at the same time!]
Effective for problem solving.
Keyboard skills improved as Internet Pen Pal program progressed.
No Child Left Behind – are we teaching children properly for the 21st C? Rather rote? IPPP – children are so more motivated.
Surely learning on the job – ie corresponding with students in other international classrooms – has to be better than following worksheets and prompts etc.
Bryan Scanlon – ePals
Demonstrated ePals School Center
Repository for documents and media ... all the tools you need in one place to allow collaboration etc. Can form groups etc.
Useful links - http://school.discoveryeducation.com
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