Online writing process website

http://criterion28.ets.org/cwe/
You must go through the online training for this website to be used by your students. It is very helpful as it helps students to edit their work and get it to a published piece.

Great online resources

http://wise.berkeley.edu/ This is a great website. It is free to create a teacher account. You then have students create free accounts with the password that it gives to you. Once that is established students can go online and do inquiry based science projects. You can manage their progress, read their notes, and see their lab responses.
http://www.terrificscience.org

Agenda items

For the next two meetings this month, I'll bring along a strategy called "SORT" aimed at helping students effectively search Internet sites for research projects. The big issue in the literature on Internet searching, apart from problems that arise when students enter erroneous information in the search engine and simply get lost in the morass of sites listed, is "source evaluation." In essence, who is the site author? What organization supports the site? What are the biases and positions associated with this site? In short, engaging students in critical reading related to sites. As Mary McNabb points out, some students are absolutely enamored with sites that appear attractive, even though the information may be wrong.

Look forward to seeing you this week at our meeting.
Tom

Response to earlier entries

I enjoyed reading your entries and the various strategies you have been trying (e.g. interactive notebooks, Polar Opposites etc.). Perhaps we can share some of the artifacts that go with themm next time (Olive Garden). I agree that podcasts are probably good driving time items but I also prefer visuals with the voice (e.g. slides and a voice over). Also agree that ELMOs offer a very useful way to display all sorts of information (e.g. wave forms in science).

As we get into the Mary McNabb book, we can examine some of the many websites she offers, along with issues related to reading Internet based text. See also work by Julie Coiro, Don Leu, and a great popular book, Wikinomics. It really gets at the collaborative nature of learning and creative production that our students will be part of (i.e. globalization but in the sense of developing world citizens).

Have a great super bowl weekend!
Tom

Welcome back and discussion item

Hi All,
Welcome back to the grant project and I enjoyed reading your posted comments and use of various strategies (e.g. Polar Opposites). I found the view of podcasts and listening minus a person/face to echo some of my feelings in this regard. Works fine for music but less so when you would like to see a video clip of the speaker (ala Teacher Tube and YouTube).

While traveling over the holiday period, I finished reading Literacy and Education. On page 114 the authors talk about "the classroom of tomorrow." So, here's a question for us:

In your view, what would an ideal classroom look like in your discipline? And, what would it offer for students?

For example, while back in my home state (Hawai'i), I read about a school on the Big Island that is essentially a Hawaiian culture magnet school. A few days each week students are out of the classroom in the natural envrironment growing taro, studying water quality, etc. The science curriculum (math too) revolves around social practices that are cultually based on ancient and modern Hawaiian ways of knowing and acting. This seems like a pretty powerful way to approch curriculum and high school graduates of this program have successfully advanced to college and beyond. In a way, this is an ideal classroom/school design for these students.

Your thoughts? (and I know it's easy to be pretty cynical amidst the perfect storm we find ourselves experiencing in 2009).....

Thanks,
Tom

Podcast & Literacy and Education, Chapt. 5

The podcast was interesting, but I personnally found it difficult it listen to a speaker for so long and not have a face to attach to the voice! I would like to find out if her findings match the resent brain research findings.
I've misplaced my notes so I'll get back to the podcast later.

Chapter 5 in Literacy and Education discussed multimodal identity in ways that easily blend with the teaching of mathematics. Color and movement are used, in very specific ways, as math strategies when introducing new algorythms. Incorporating these types of activities into daily lessons help all students comprehend on a higher level, especially the second language students. In this case when I say comprehend I am referring to the ability to transfer knowledge from concrete to abstract.
Paula Jackson