Thursday, September 30, 2010

What has changed in the periodic table, the environment and education in the past 40 years since I last took chemistry?


 Permanent link cross posted at TechLearning.com


 I am co-teaching in a Physical Science class. Actually, I am co-learning about the Periodic Table. Here is an interactive periodic table where you can look at the historical perspective by hovering over each element. No wonder I did not recognize the periodic table.  Look at how it has changed since 1970!
Periodic TableOn April 22, 1970, we celebrated our first Earth Day, now 40 years later we are finally taking our own cloth bags to the grocery store. Why? We hear that plastic bags may take from 20 to 1,000 years to decay.   Things have changed here too!
 In November 1980 the Superfund Bill was established to clean up the hazardous waste sites in the USA. Why? After years of stockpiling waste in metal containers the containers finally started leaking and spilling into the water supply and the land.     We have made progress in this area.
In June 1990 the Spotted Owl was declared endangered in the West. It was fought by the logging businesses as it would stop their cutting of old forests. Some folks are now talking about taking some animals off the endangered list!
 In education we have a similar timeline.
1970 - Jean Piaget's book, The Science of Education, is published. We begin an era of discovery based teaching.

1990 - Public Law 101-476, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), renames and amends Public Law 94-142. In addition to changing terminology from handicap to disability, it mandates transition services and adds autism and traumatic brain injury to the eligibility list.

2001
- The controversial No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) is approved by Congress and signed into law by President George W. Bush on January 8, 2002. The law, which reauthorizes the ESEA of 1965, holds schools accountable for student achievement levels and provides penalties for schools that do not make adequate yearly progress toward meeting the goals of NCLB.
September 2010
Education Nation will this spur on change? Is this the tipping point?

What has changed in the past 40 years in science, the environment, education? How much has stayed the same?

Sunday, September 12, 2010

Run Away!


Run Away!
Originally uploaded by Burwash Calligrapher

Getting ready for TechLearning
Cross posted at TechLearning

  

Back to school this fall season meant back in the classroom for me. Ever since I went to the MLTI Student Conference last May 2010, I was yearning for life as a classroom teacher again. Be careful what you wish for, my wish came true. There was an opening at our local high school and here I am. High school resource room teacher/facilitator!

You will be hearing lots of stories this year about high school, special education, universal design for learning, assistive technology and our google domain.

We decided to begin with making some changes in our support study. We now have a Skills Cafe. This is organic, flexible and as one of my peers says  crunchy. Ask the students what they think, they have a few more descriptors like this is not what I want to do, why do I have to do this, this is dumb, and many  more. Anything to get out of being organized and collaborative. However, we have a plan and we are sticking to it. I should mention that some students thought it was cool, especially since they can add things to the calendar like football games, field hockey, drama, and marching band. I will be busy trying to attend something for each student!
  Our first step was to get all students into the google domain, with a shared calendar, shared folder for their assignments and a place to check their email. We accomplished this in a two week span.  At the end of the second week, I left messages in all their email accounts with a good job email and if necessary a reminder to complete missing assignments. I can peek at their grades and see what is missing, send them an email reminder, talk with their teachers and all this from one stop at my computer.

This is going to be a year long journey. We will have some challenges, some celebrations and some student success stories. If you have something to share along these lines leave a comment, let’s build this together and share with others.

Resources:
My new blog Learning Cafe a door to the future http://learningcafe-doortothefuture.blogspot.com/

Our twitter:  Door2Future

Our moodle page:   http://moodle.wocsd.org/course/view.php?id=199

Our Twitter Feed goes right to the blog and to our Facebook page. 

Planning Session


Planning Session
Originally uploaded by Kaptain Kobold

How will you plan your week?

Flickr

This is a test post from flickr, a fancy photo sharing thing.

Saturday, September 4, 2010

SEEDLINGS 2010-2011


We are BAACK! Bob, Alice and I met this morning for 3 hours by SKYPE. I just love SKYPE. We are all over the state, yet we caught up and made a plan for this year. No big announcements just yet, but we are searching for new guests for our Thursday evening show, 7:30 PM EST (19:30 GMT) at Edtechtalk.com .
We jazzed up our Facebook Seedlings site, if you don't already have a Facebook account we hope you consider getting one, our Twitter feed, if you don't have a Twitter account we hope you consider getting one, and re-affirmed our mission.
In 2007 our purpose was to find a virtual space where we could connect, create, publish and collaborate with others.

In 2010-2011 SEEDLINGs mission remains the same! I think we would add that our purpose is to find a virtual space where we can connect, create, publish and collaborate with educators from around the globe, who in turn connect, create, publish and collaborate with more people. Spread the words and conversations! Stay tuned!

Friday, September 3, 2010

Social Networking on the fly!

Just finished getting my multiple accounts set up!

First VERY, VERY, Hot week at Wells High School


It was a short week, a teacher workshop day, our internet was flaky, our student information system was even flakier, some of it could be attributed to the newness of it. For me, it didn't help I worked in the 09-10 school year for a day! Thankfully, our data chief figured it out and now I have student access.
Amazingly, resilient students sat and listened, engaged and participated during the heat and humidity. All a tribute to the social nature of their beings and the learning situations that face to face school puts all of us in.
We have all tested the waters, we will be back next week and we will begin to find the balance of learning, social networking, connections and collaboration in this journey called high school.

Thursday, September 2, 2010

Please visit my classroom blog.


New clustrmap on my classroom blog. Please visit so my students can see the power of connections and conversations!
http://learningcafe-doortothefuture.blogspot.com/

Thanks to Ivstan.

Thanks to the global community over 43 spots on the ClustrMap in 24 hours!

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Scientists at work

Students engaged in learning.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone