Colette Cassinelli’s edtech VISION

I know everyone is waiting until the VERY last minute to enter the NECC button contest by Scott McLeod and Wes Fryer so they can check out the competition but I can’t wait to submit my ideas – plus I won’t have time between now and May 1st to do much work.

So here’s my take on … I am here for the learning revolution. I’m still not sure if I can attend NECC or not so I am hoping that someone will feel sorry for me (since I actually took the time to enter!) and vote for ME. Plus I’m going to start a “sponsor Colette to NECC” contest soon and the lucky winner will get to hang out with ME – now that’s worth something!!!

#1 – Original button made by CCassinelli
Photo from Courosa: http://www.flickr.com/photos/courosa/2311845824/

#2 – Original button made by CCassinelli

#3 – Original button made by CCassinelli
Photo from Woodly Wonderworks: http://www.flickr.com/photos/wwworks/440672445/

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.

Every so often I google my name to make sure my public profile accurately represents me.  I was pleasantly surprised to find that miffdesigner used a quote from my blog on a flickr mashup she made for a school project.

Thanks!  It made my day!

Colette’s (updated) Top 10 Tools

1. Gmail. I love this web based email system and the fact that I can access it from any computer. Not only do you get tons of storage but I like the way it keeps the threaded conversations together. Gmail chat is also nifty.
2. Google Docs. Google docs are great for collaborating and sharing information with others. You must invite friends to participate in your documents but it’s so easy to edit ALL AT THE SAME TIME!!!.
3. iGoogle Ok, ok, so I love of all the of the Google products – but I do use them and find them easy to use. iGoogle is a personalized page (which I make as my own homepage) that you can customize with all kinds of widgets like: weather, calendar, CNN news, Google Reader (RSS), Gmail notifier, jokes, etc…
4. del.icio.us. I can’t believe how much I depend on this social bookmarking tool to remember sites I have visited but also for sharing cool sites with my friends. Now I don’t need to be that annoying friend who always sends emails recommending websites (I can’t help myself) – if I find a site and know my friend’s del.icio.us name I can tag the site as: for:ccassinelli and then when that user goes to their del.icio.us account they can add my favorite to theirs. This is very helpful for group projects!
5. flickr. This web-based photo sharing site is awesome for uploading photos to share with friends. I like how you can create different albums and tag photos for easy sorting. I also love snooping through my friend’s albums too!
6. My first RSS aggregator was Bloglinesand I still use it today. I like how I can create folders for all of the ed tech blogs I read. Here are my folders: personal, ed tech bloggers, under consideration and last chance. When I stumble across a blog I might be interested in I add the feed in the under consideration folder. When I find that I enjoy the blog and read it often it moved up in rank to the ed tech bloggers folder while some of those are demoted to last chance before I decide to do away with the feed.
7. Audacity. This easy to use FREE audio editing software is easy to use for podcasting and editing audio files. You will need the LAME Mp3 encoder if you want to export your audio files at MP3 instead of WAV – but it’s easy to download and install.
8. Wikispaces. I’ve already mentioned my love of wikis in my blog but for collaboration and easy editing – wikis are the way to go. I also love the fact that Wikispaces gives FREE wikis to teachers. Thanks for the support!
9. Voicethread – A great tool for encouraging collaboration in your classroom. Upload photos and add text, audio or voice comments with a web cam. My new personal favorite way to get students to share comments with each other.
10. Moodle. I started using Moodle this last year with a few of my computer classes but will use this open-source course management system with all my classes this year. It’s easy to use, has built in blogging and modules (quizzes, journals, docs) that make it easy to keep all class documents in one area.

TOP 100 TOOLS FOR LEARNING – SPRING 2008
as collected by Jane Hart

2007 Top Ten Tools: http://www.c4lpt.co.uk/recommended/colettecassinelli.html (my current list is pretty similar to the 2007 list. Hey – I like what I like!)

Photo Credit: http://flickr.com/photos/cayusa/2221656599/

Engaging Students with Authentic Technology Projects – Sun, 2/17/08, 7:30-8:30 pm

Handouts located at: http://edtechvision.wikispaces.com/ITSC

Embrace 21st century strategies to create an instructional learning environment that moves away from teaching isolated computer skills towards an integrated thematic approach. Come learn how you can combine everyday productivity tools with Web 2.0 to support curriculum integration and collaboration.

The National Technology Standards for Students (NETS*S) recommends that educators establish new learning environments that provide real world opportunities for students to utilize current information and technology resources (ISTE, 2000).

According to The American Youth Policy Forum (2000) instruction in today’s high schools must change. Disengagement from the learning process is a widespread problem in high schools as students do not perceive how lessons are relevant to their lives.

The American Youth Policy Forum reports that lecture style classes continue to dominate classroom instruction and content is divorced from the real world. Schools need to embrace new strategies for learning based on current research of how students learn, implement effective uses of technology in the classroom, and develop “21st Century Skills” while maintaining a rigorous academic curriculum (Burkhardt et al., 2003 http://www.ncrel.org/engauge).

It takes vision and planning to engage students in authentic learning experiences. Teachers must identify which instructional strategies are most effective and understand how to infuse technology into lessons with real world applications.

Instead of asking the question “What technology skills must students have to face the 21st century?” should we not be asking “What thinking and literacy skills must students have to face the 21st century?” These skills are not tied to any particular software or technology-type, but rather aim to provide students with the thinking skill and thus the opportunity to succeed no matter what their futures hold.” Justin Medved, Dennis Harter
Curriculum is designed from the best practice approaches to teaching and learning found in Understanding by Design

The Essential Questions for the 21st Century Learner are:

• How do you know information is true?
• How do you communicate effectively?
• What does it mean to be a global citizen?
• How do I learn best?
• How can we be safe?

These questions speak to thinking, critically evaluating, analyzing, and communicating. They emphasize the value in responsible behavior and knowing yourself as a learner. http://newliteracy.wikispaces.com/

Career Unit – Based on John Holland’s six personality traits

Goals: critically evaluating, analyzing, communication

Work Samples:

• Table of Holland Traits (Word) Social Jobs Earnings (Excel)
• Career Bookmarks (Del.icio.us – bookmarks)
• Photos of Career Fair and computer class (Flickr)
• Artistic Jobs photoshow

Career Resources:

• Career Unit plan using UbD (Understanding by Design structure)
• The Career Interests Game (University of Missouri)
• Sample Self Assessment Exercise
• Career Pathfinder

Lunch Nutrition and Recycling Unit

Goals: analyzing, communication, evaluating

Work Samples

• Google shared spreadsheet for data collection
• Motivational posters of lunches (right –>) from Flickr and http://www.bighugelabs.com
• Lunch waste recycling poster – (with real lunch photos)
• Lunch Photo Assignment
• Comparing Ideal and Actual Lunches (Excel)
• Nutrition letter | House Bill Letter (mail merge)
• House Bill podcast | remixed as Voicethread Audio edited with Audacity

Nutrition / Waste Recycling Resources

• Nutritious Lunch ideas
• http://www.wastefreelunches.org/
• Reuse Recycling = Waste Reduction (pdf)

Other Classroom Activities:

TOP 100 TOOLS FOR LEARNING 2007 – http://c4lpt.co.uk/recommended/toolbox2007.html

• Valiant Pride: New student edition – a newspaper that my students designed for new incoming students (samples:
  • pg 1 | pg 2 | pg3 | pg4 | pg5| pg6 | pg7 | pg8

• Search Engine Extravaganza – PowerPoint presentations to teach our school community about unique search engines
  • Meta Search Engines

• BE SAFE ONLINE! Projects made by students to discuss online safety (including chat rooms, cyber bullying, online profiles, photo sharing, etc)
  • Wiki to store document sources used in projects
  • Samples of projects made on blogs, Flickr, and Google presentations (work in progress)

• Curriculum Review Quizzes – Note: action buttons and hyperlinks do not work on slideshare – you must download the PowerPoint first
  • Grendel Quiz | US History test review| Biology Quiz uploaded to Slideshare.net (can embed the shows on a wiki or webpage
  • Global Studies Quiz uploaded to Google presentations (can embed the shows on a wiki or webpage or you can invite others to view presentation and display a CHAT window during the presentation)

• Mission Possible: Web 2.0 – a class wiki to explore new Web 2.0 tools (work in progess)

• Peace Day 2007 video

Note: Some of the lessons in this session are based on activities that I designed for my Action Research Project for my MA in Educational Technology from Pepperdine University. Three complete thematic units are located at http://cadres.pepperdine.edu/ar/c9/Cassinelli/arp.htm

Works Cited

1. American Youth Policy Forum http://www.aypf.org/
2. Best Jobs for the 21st Century, 4th Edition by Michael Farr. ©2006 JIST Publishing, Inc.
3. Curriculum 2.0 http://newliteracy.wikispaces.com/http://newliteracy.wikispaces.com/http://newliteracy.wikispaces.com/
4. enGauge 21st Century Skills: Literacy in the Digital Age (Burkhardt, G., Monsour M., Valdez, G., Gunn, C., Dawson, M., Lemke, C., et al., 2003) North Central Regional Educational Laboratory and the Metiri Group, http://www.ncrel.org/engauge
5. National Educational Technology Standards for Students (NETS*S) http://cnets.iste.org/students/s_stands.htmlhttp://cnets.iste.org/students/s_stands.htmlhttp://cnets.iste.org/students/s_stands.html

Just for fun …

http://metaatem.net/words/

Thanks to Beyond School for sharing

I still teach a basic computer application course (as opposed to working with HS teachers to integrate technology into their curriculum) and my goal is to make sure students have the tech skills necessary to be successful in class.  I don’t, however, want to just teach “computer skills” – and teach technology just for the sake of  learning technology.  The past few years I have redesign my computer application course around themes, such as career exploration, teen issues, nutrition/recycling, and CSI (computer scene investigation!)

Through out each theme. we use the tools of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Web 2.0 tools to investigate our topic.  For example, during the career unit we took a personality tests based on Dr. John Holland’s theory that people and work environments can be classified into six different groups:  Social, Artistic, Investigative, Enterprising, Realistic and Conventional.  We created tables in Word to describe the attributes of these personality traits and listed careers for each group.  We collected data about annual earnings, percent of growth and number of annual openings and analyzed the data in Excel and created graphs to display the information.  We made online slide shows, cartoons, and magazine covers using favorite Web 2.o tools like toondoo, polldaddy, photo show and flickr toys.  For a final culminating project, we are designing kiosks (using science board type displays) to display all of our information.  We will host a career fair to help other classmates discover their strongest personality trait and which career options are best for them.

While I feel that the students are much more engaged in the thematic units, it does require careful planning on my part to make sure that all the required skills are introduced, reviewed and mastered throughout the term.

Thanks to a comment by Larry Ferlazzo I have been checking out the various lists of top ten favorite tools that are listed on Jane’s E-Learning Pick of the Day.

You can submit your top ten list of favorite tools (only 10???) and then Jane is compiling all the tools mentioned into one master list – the Top 100.

I especially enjoyed looking at the list by guest submitter Jay Cross. Hearing how and why different folks liked their chosen tools intrigued me enough to spend way too much time checking them all out.

Here are my favorite tools (in no particular order).

1. Google Products:
   • Gmail. I love this web based email system and the fact that I can access it from any computer. Not only do you get tons of storage but I like the way it keeps the threaded conversations together. Gmail chat is also nifty.
   • Google Docs. Google docs are great for collaborating and sharing information with others. You must invite friends to participate in your documents but it’s so easy to edit ALL AT THE SAME TIME!!!.
   • iGoogle and Google reader. Ok, ok, so I love of all the of the Google products – but I do use them and find them easy to use. iGoogle is a personalized page (which I make as my own homepage) that you can customize with all kinds of widgets like: weather, calendar, CNN news, Google Reader (RSS), Gmail notifier, jokes, etc…
   • Googlemaps, Google Earth, SketchUp …. I love ‘em all!
2. Del.icio.us. I can’t believe how much I depend on this social bookmarking tool to remember sites I have visited but also for sharing cool sites with my friends. Now I don’t need to be that annoying friend who always sends emails recommending websites (I can’t help myself) – if I find a site and know my friend’s del.icio.us name I can tag the site as: for:ccassinelli and then when that user goes to their del.icio.us account they can add my favorite to theirs. This is very helpful for group projects!
3. Flickr. This web-based photo sharing site is awesome for uploading photos to share with friends. I like how you can create different albums and tag photos for easy sorting. I also love snooping through my friend’s albums too!
4. My first RSS aggregator was Bloglines and I still use it today. I like how I can create folders for all of the ed tech blogs I read. Here are my folders: personal, ed tech bloggers, under consideration and last chance. When I stumble across a blog I might be interested in I add the feed in the under consideration folder. When I find that I enjoy the blog and read it often it moved up in rank to the ed tech bloggers folder while some of those are demoted to last chance before I decide to do away with the feed.
5. Audacity. This easy to use FREE audio editing software is easy to use for podcasting and editing audio files. You will need the LAME Mp3 encoder if you want to export your audio files at MP3 instead of WAV – but it’s easy to download and install.
6. Wikispaces. I’ve already mentioned my love of wikis earlier in my blog but for collaboration and easy editing – wikis are the way to go. I also love the fact that wikispaces gives FREE wikis to teachers. Thanks for the support!
7. Skype. I use skype more for IM and group chatting than Internet phone calling but it’s easy to use and really catching on.
8. Flock and Firefox. Both of these browsers are excellent and have cool extensions. Most browsers have built in RSS but you can also access your Flickr pics right from the Flock toolbar – kewl!
9. Moodle. I started using Moodle this last year with a few of my computer classes but will use this open-source course management system with all my classes this year. It’s easy to use, has built in blogging and modules (quizzes, journals, docs) that make it easy to keep all class documents in one area.
10. YouTube. YouTube is great when you need a few laughs or want to share short family video with loved ones across the country. I also love the idea of TeacherTube. Educators need a safe and secure place where our students can particpate in the social aspect of video sharing and engaging students with video responses.

So, there’s my list. I didn’t include software tools like MS Office, Dreamweaver, Inspiration, InDesign and all of those productivity tools that I use everyday.

What is your top 10?