October

What a great and amazing time of year....Fall or Autumn. We were driving along and came upon this scene and had to take a picture. It represents what I like to think as Fall. It is a beautiful time of year and with all the rain this year, the leaf colors are brilliant. It is a time to reflect as the year draws to a close.
Halloween is tomorrow, Thanksgiving in about three weeks, and then, of course, the Christmas season.....Time goes really fast. I remember my uncles and aunts saying that as you get older time flies. Boy, is that true. I can remember a time when I took all day to clean house and I mean I cleaned the whole house. Now, the day goes by so fast that I took all day to clean house meaning that I cleaned the refrigerator out....too funny.


Look at those leaves! Kicking up work with cutting tree limbs and raking leaves.....This was really work, but we truly enjoyed being outside with the fresh air and sun.

Cell Phones Become Learning Tools | theledger.com | The Ledger | Lakeland, FL

 Here is a school that is not afraid to let their High School Students use cell phones and personal computers as learning tools.  The students are using them in the schools...in their classes....

• Cell Phones Become Learning Tools | theledger.com | The Ledger | Lakeland, FL

  
  

  • Cell Phones Become Learning Tools

    At Wiregrass Ranch High, cell phones are used in classroom work.

  • WESLEY CHAPEL | Jennifer Gould ended her class announcements and told her students to take out their cell phones.

  • "I need at least three people who can get a signal in here," Gould said to her advanced placementD.H. Lawrence, and I want you to find some things about him that you don't already know." literature class. "We're going to be studying the works of

    Nearly everyone whipped out a phone and began tapping away. Within moments, the teens were sharing their Internet discoveries.

  • In a world where most high schools have adopted a "we see them, we take them" policy on cell phones, Pasco County's Wiregrass Ranch High School swims upstream. It encourages teachers to allow students to use their phones in classes for educational purposes. Teens routinely use their phones to shoot pictures for projects, calculate math problems, check their teachers' blogs and even take lecture notes.
  • If anyone's complaining, Bonti hasn't heard it. Parents, staffers and students alike have praised the school's many efforts to be technologically savvy, including giving students permission to use their personal laptops on campus, too, he said.
  • "It puts the education in their hands," Gould said.

tags: cell phones, learning tools, schools

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Listening - Principles of Successful Blogging #1

• If you are interested in blogging, here are some tips from Darren Rowse that has been blogging since 2002.....

• Listening - Principles of Successful Blogging #1

  • Listening - Principles of Successful Blogging #1
  • Listen to the culture of the blogosphere
  • Listen for where your potential readers are gathering
  • Listen to what others in your niche are saying

  • My own monitoring of my niches generally happens in two ways:

    1. Subscribing to Feeds of Key Sources of Information - these days most sites have some way of subscribing to them, usually via an RSS feed.
  • 2. Keyword Alerts -
  • Recommendation Sites -
  • Twitter -
  • Listen to what is being said about you
  • Create Listening Spaces on Your Blog
  • Listen to the Questions Your Readers are Asking
  • Listen to what is working (and what isn’t)

  • Some places to start include:

    • What posts are being read most?
    • What posts are generating good conversation/comments?
    • What posts are being linked to by others most?
    • How are readers using your design? (use a tool like CrazyEgg to create a heatmap)
    • What days of the week are people reading your site most on? What times of the day?
    • What pages are people ‘bouncing’ from your site on (bounce rate shows how many people arrive on your blog and immediately leave)
    • What posts are people spending most (and least) time on?
    • What posts are you getting most negative feedback on?
  • How else do you Listen in your blogging?
  
  

  tags: problogger, blogging, Darren Rowse

• Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Langwitches Blog » Blogging with Elementary School Students

Blogging for Elementary School Students:
Here is an excellent article and I love the statement "Blogging is one way of linking writing, reading, and connecting information and learning together" that Silvia Tolisano makes in her blog....

• Langwitches Blog » Blogging with Elementary School Students

  • Blogging with Elementary School Students

    by Langwitches ~ December 23rd, 2008. Filed under: Blogging, Classroom Projects, Digital Storytelling, Elementary School, Geography, Literacy.

    All of our teachers at my elementary school maintain their own classroom blog.  As I wrote about in Blogs vs. Static Website and Changes in Classroom Blogs, we still have a long way to go as we need to move forward from merely a one sided communication tool to an online learning space that encourages, fosters and supports students’ creativity and learning.

    Being able to read AND express yourself in a digital world is an important part of being literate in the 21st century.

  • Blogging with Elementary School Students

    by Langwitches ~ December 23rd, 2008. Filed under: Blogging, Classroom Projects, Digital Storytelling, Elementary School, Geography, Literacy.

    All of our teachers at my elementary school maintain their own classroom blog.  As I wrote about in Blogs vs. Static Website and Changes in Classroom Blogs, we still have a long way to go as we need to move forward from merely a one sided communication tool to an online learning space that encourages, fosters and supports students’ creativity and learning.

  • Blogging is one way of linking writing, reading, and connecting information and learning together. It seems the perfect venue to introduce elementary school students to the online world world of networked learning. They need to get acquainted to reading and writing hyperlinked text .

tags: langwitches, blogging, Silvia Tolisano

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Social Learning

5 Great Social Learning Resources

Social Learning Models - Social Media In Learning

Jane Hart wrote about 3 social learning models involving technology...
1. The wrap-around model
2. Integrated Model
3. Collaboration Model...

In my opinion, the best model for schools is the collaboration model where students work together to create the project.

Check out Jane Hart's blog; it is full of good information for teachers and students.

 http://janeknight.typepad.com/socialmedia/2009/09/social-learning-models.html

• Social Learning Models - Social Media In Learning

  tags: no_tag

  • Social Learning Models

    When I help organisations understand how to incorporate social media into their formal e-learning content to create formal social learning, I explain this can be done in 3 different ways as shown in this slide from a presentation I use:

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Fall!

Fall is here and it looks beautiful. The leaves are changing colors, pumpkin farms are on the rise, and people are buying STUFF for Halloween. Where did the summer go?
It seems like yesterday it was the first day of spring, now it is fall. Along with this change in weather comes raking leaves and cleaning gardens and basically getting ready for winter.
Don't forget to take pictures of the leaves changing before they are all on the ground.

From Pritchard's Press

From Pritchard's Press