Virtual Field Trip- Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks

My daughter has been studying "landforms"in her 3rd grade class.  I have been lucky enough to be working in Albuquerque, NM and had the opportunity to take a hike in an amazing National Park. While I can't bring my daughter to work with me...I thought this would be  a great time to bring what I am learning back to her class virtually.  The tent rocks and slot canyon at Kahsa-Katuwe Tent Rocks Memorial are layers of volcanic rock and ash deposited by a volcanic explosion of the Jemez volcanic field. Over time, weathering and erosion has created amazing canyons and tent rocks. I was absolutely in awe of the geography and thought her class would benefit from this virtual field trip.
ENJOY

Plan the Assessment

Assessments in PBL are aimed at measuring content knowledge and skills such as collaboration, communication, problem solving, and teamwork. Learn how to match project outcomes with assessment strategies and rubrics.

via pbl-online.org

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Teachers Talk Classroom Challenges, Successes | NBC Philadelphia

"Teachers aren't going to be clamoring to get into the classroom if the teaching profession continues to be thrown under the bus at every single opportunity," said panelist Diana Laufenberg.

Laufenberg, a teacher at Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia, says the conversation around teachers both in the community and in the media needs to change so that everyone can be successful.

via nbcphiladelphia.com

A necessary conversation...Check back on http://www.educationnation.com/ on Monday 6/6 to see the townhall meeting in it's entirety.

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Joyce Valenza's Resources from PETE& C

I couldn't type fast enough to keep up with Joyce Valenza's session School Libraries and Web-based Practice: A Tour of Effective Practice

Although I arrived about 10 minutes late, I feel like she shared 2 hours worth of information and resources and 

One was childrenslibrary.org

Let students create book talks, incorporate Web 2.0 tools as platform, let them mash things up
http://bookleads.wikispaces.com/
Book talk a day
Joyce shared Book trailers for all https://www.4shared.com/u/ZiDT_kOV/Book_Trailers_for_All.html
and how she makes Summer Reading transparent http://springfieldreading.wikispaces.com/
http://www.paperbackswap.com/index.php Great way to stretch library budget and it is FREE print out mailer, wrap book in it.
http://skypeanauthor.wetpaint.com/
LibGuides http://libguides.com/community.php?m=i&ref=libguides.com
LiveBinders, Google Sites
vimeo
I don't think that she could make finding the google tools any easier than THIS http://joycevalenza1.edu.glogster.com/googlesearch/
wow, Wow, WOW shouldn't all the PA SGPs be done like THIS http://tinyurl.com/4ao5oj2 via @joycevalenza #petec2011

As soon as she has her slides posted on slideshare http://www.slideshare.net/joycevalenza/presentations I will be sure to post them here but I think this tweet kind of sum's up my feelings about this session.

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And here are her slides if that wasn't enough

Library21pete&c2

View more presentations from joycevalenza.

Thoughts about Internet 2010 in numbers

What happened with the Internet in 2010?
How many websites were added? How many emails were sent? How many Internet users were there? This post will answer all of those questions and many, many more. If it’s stats you want, you’ve come to the right place.
We used a wide variety of sources from around the Web to put this post together. You can find the full list of source references at the bottom of the post if you’re interested. We here at Pingdom also did some additional calculations to get you even more numbers to chew on.
Prepare for a good kind of information overload.

READ MORE & see the STATS royal.pingdom.com

WOW...107 TRILLION emails sent...1.97 BILLION Internet users worldwide (up 14% since 2009), 152 MILLION blogs publishing even easier than before, 100 MILLION new twitter accounts added and 250 MILLION new people on Facebook. 2 BILLION videos are watched DAILY on YouTube and flickr hosts 5 BILLION images (3,000 are uploaded each minute). Whether this information is even true I would need to spend a ton of time researching.
It is fascinating to me how MUCH information is out there...Just this morning in frustration over her spelling ...my 8 year old turned to google to help her find the song lyrics for a favorite song. Even mis-spelled, her new friend google helped her to find About 534,000 results (in 0.58 seconds).
Are we doing enough to help our kids learn how to navigate this information landscape?

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It's a LIE mom

Watching Groundhog Day Livestream from Punxy, PA the inner circle mentions it's Phil's 125th BDA10yo says "no way, 125 years..." disappears, comes back 10 min later, "it's a lie mom, I looked it up- groundhogs only live 10 years in captivity" LOL 

via twitlonger.com

Funny that when my 10 year old hears something he questions on TV or in conversation, his first thought is to go "look it up". He is curious, creative and knows how to seek out information.  He thinks deep and is a great problem solver. 


It is unfortunate though that he is good at "school" too.   in school he is learning that in order to succeed, he needs to know what's "in the book" and nothing more.  When he does dig deeper he has found that his answers are counted as the "wrong answer"


Where is the disconnect? and how as educators do we fix it in our current system of recall & standardized testing?

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If this is THEIR school...then what are ours

So I realize the importance of reflections I also realize that in a world where people (ok people like ME) are used to getting their information in 140 character twitter-like sound bits, in order for me to get my thoughts about Edcon in writing (and for folks to actually stop and read them) I really shouldbreak them down into multiple posts.  What I realized as I started to jot down my main ideas was that they all seemed to follow the same theme...

A quote from Chris Lehman's blog from Friday morning of Educon pretty much summed it up for me

There's going to be a horde of kids at SLA tomorrow. This is EduCon, and this is their school, and a little snow isn't going to stop them.

via practicaltheory.org

This is THEIR school...I know that many of us teach in great places, that their are pockets of "ownership" in our sports and music clubs, student councils and other curricular activities, but in how many of our schools can our KIDS as clearly articulate OUR purpose as educators as Jeff Kessler @educoncierge did in his post

Education is a game and people have their priorities backwards. -- This probably sounds like I'm the child of Chris Lehmann, Zac Chase, or one of the many other wonderful SLA teachers, but I agree with them. We've made education into a game and it's no longer about teaching skills, it's about teaching facts. Data retrieval is incredibly easy. But the ability to process and synthesize the information is difficult. That's what we need to foster; the ability to combine and organize ideas is one that deserves much more time in the classroom.

via jeffkess.posterous.com

The ability to combine and organize ideas...

I watched as students (and I mean HUNDREDS of students) and parents and faculty worked side by side not for a sporting event or the arts or music or other extra curricular activity...and while all of these are important parts of the education process these people...the kids, the teachers, and the parents were all working together to promote the BUSINESS OF SCHOOLS... to teach children.  

So what are OUR schools and how can we make them more of the community that SLA represents?  We spent the weekend trying to tackle the really BIG questions in education but the biggest one for me as a wanna be school leader is how do take all of this and create community

 @educoncierge ended his post 

I look forward to seeing all of my educartor friends next year and hope that we can actually talk retroactiveally about some changes to our education system.

I can't either Jeff...I can't wait to see how Educon 2.3 has challenged us all to take a look at what OUR schools are ... and how we can do the best for our students! 

Thank you to the whole SLA team for once again opening your doors and reminding us....school is for THEM... 

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