If you would like more information and the actual pieces I used during my presentation online today, please free to visit my earlier blog post http://blog.discoveryeducation.com/ldaughrity/2008/10/29/region-iv-conference/. I have quite a few samples including the original from Beth: Click-Clack-Moo. What a wonderful idea she had with this project. I hope that by sharing it with you all, you can share it with more in your district. Be creative with these complicated programs. After doing this, you will quickly realize how childproof many programs really are…
For more information on my green 180 project, please visit www.Green180.org or e-mail me.
After months… okay well over a year, I finally got a message from my husband on twitter. He joined! He doesn’t really get it, but he’s trying it. Last night I caught him on his phone reading another’s tweets and I thought, “he may actually be getting it. We’ll see.” He wants to understand all of this stuff, so he is testing it out for himself. The funny thing is, I know he will find it as useful as I do. The first thing I had to teach him last night is “what does PLN stand for?” - Personal Learning network. He will get one quickly. Today, funny enough, I got this great post through my PLN and I thought I would share it. I did not create this, so please give credit where credit is due. But please, enjoy learning from it!
After posting yesterday, I continued to look around on TED Talks and I came across another extremely interesting video about someone trying to save my dear darling Ned and his family. I felt like I was meeting Ned’s other keeper! It was an incredible story of passion and innovation in the spirit of conservation! Better yet, it was all about trees (Green 180)and we know that is what I am all about right now, so I found it even that much more interesting. When you have about 20 minutes, come back and check it out.
Last year, Cindy Wallace (another DEN STAR from LA) and I stayed up all night researching and creating an online seek and find on google earth for a Orangutan Sanctuary near Borneo. I had purchased an Orangutan from the Discovery store earlier in the week and we decided to do a fun little project with it. (Of course, the orangutan had to have a name, so I named him NED after the DEN.) We researched about the animal and about it’s natural habitat. I learned alot about that area in that one night and have honestly spent the last year building on that knowledge. So you can understand why I was so excited to see this video about the things that Willie Smits and the Indonesian locals are doing to really improve the environment not only for themselves, but for the local animals as well… especially NED. Check out the video:
I just spent a few minutes watching a re-watching the latest TED Talks video. I find the topic incredibly relevant since that is the topic of next years Green 180 project… “Trees.” Kamal Meattle is talking more about the short statured ones ie. plants, that we should grow indoors to create more oxygen. I started thinking about my classroom and the classrooms around mine. Very few have plants in them. Most of them have a small table plant that takes little maintenance and can be ignored over the long holidays. All of my classroom plants are terrariums or are feaux lifesize plants that I created to show lifecycles, but not much is available in the way of real ones. Why hadn’t I thought about that before. As teachers, we always take our kids outside to get fresh air. After watching this video though, I feel like I may head on down to the local garden center and see if I can find myself a few of these three garden varieties to plant right in my classroom. I will even introduce it as a class project so that the kids will understand their purpose. I teach kinder-5, so some of my kids just will not get any of the TED Talks video and the rest will not see a whole lot of excitement in it, but I can definitely see the excitement in it. My classroom is room CO2. How ironic is that? So I can’t get rid of all of the carbon dioxide, but I can always add a little more of the oxygen, right! My kids may even perk up a little… as if any of them have ever found their technology class stale and boring. I am not sure that is possible!
So my beautiful niece, Justice, spent time researching and creating this 3 minute video explaining the phrase “Justice for All.” She is competing in a contest and needs as many people as possible to view her video. Being the teacher, I would also appreciate you leaving any comments of encouragement as well. She is a smart cookie and all words of encouragement are appreciated! Oh, and spread the word!
I just can’t get this Discovery Student Adventures out of my head… Aaaaah! So, I did a search this morning on it to get the dates again and I found the new site. WOW! I felt so honored to see Phillipe Cousteau on the front of it talking. “Hey, I just had dinner with him,” I told my students! Yeah right! They have forgotten in only two weeks all of my fun from TCEA. Such is the life of a kid. I will not forget!
Anyway, the site looks really good. It is nice to see all the things they have planned for the adventures! Kung Fu lessons, visiting the barrier reefs (a life long dream)! I cannot believe that Discovery is so cool to do this for teachers and the kids they sped so much time nurturing! To be honest, I am tearing up just thinking about it! All of these people I spent last summer with… and to know a few of them will have the opportunity to get to go on this great trip with these amazing people like Phillipe and learn from the best with their students! What and awesome Student Discovery. How fun to be completely on the learning side with your student! I could keep talking about it, but I must get to my next class!
It’s about that time of year were I start dreaming of next year. I have two big projects I intend to carry out next year, but I just need to do the lesson plans for them. So like all good teachers, I am procrastinating and writing in my blog. It sounded like the right thing to do to get the juices flowing.
We started meeting in January about Green 180 and are developing detailed lesson plans for each of the campuses that will be participating in the project. If you haven’t read anything about it, feel free to read up on it at http://www.green180.org. We have narrowed down most of the project details and hope to have the full plan on the site before schools end this year. It has been interesting deciding on how we are going to do this when our district didn’t have any standard way to use webcams set up or most of the programs opened up on the internet. I guess that is part of being a technology person wanting more than the regular setup. So far everyone has been very positive, supportive and open in our district to what we are doing. They are wonderful about that. When they can see the benefit to the student’s I think they are willing to work with you on anything. I think the combination of web 2.0 products with distance learning and a little bit of environmental benefit all comes together to make an interesting and kid-approved project.
The second project we will be doing will last the entire first semester of school next year and ought to be a lot of fun. This project is going to be through a wikispace: http://nedskeeper.wikispaces.com/. In order to encourage the use of bubble maps through kidspiration and then to promote the writing process, we will be writing about Ned’s Wild Adventures. We will also incorporate Google Earth into this project to track the travel’s of our dear Ned throughout the semester and on into the holidays. This group of lessons will hopefully easily lead into several book and movie making projects that will complete our year.
My kids have been doing all of these things in a less formal manner over the last few years, but I think this more concise method will allow the kids to really feel connected from start to finish and will really have something to be proud of at the end of the year. It is so affirming to send the kids home with finished products that they can enjoy and have with them forever. It really gives them a sense of accomplishment and is a huge confidence booster. I hope that being so prepared for next year will alleviate some of the nerves I often have when school starts. I doubt it. A new group… even if it is the same old kids in new jeans… still makes me excited and nervous.
What a great evening here in Texas. Discovery pulled through with one amazing gentleman tonight with Phillipe Cousteau. Very seldom can you say you met someone who actually took the time to have a conversation with you and… he remembered my name several hours later. What a great guest and I look forward to sharing his videos with my students once they are available. It was such an honor to get to go to this dinner and visit with other amazing teachers around the state. I was so sad when I had to miss the pre-conference due to a prior speaking engagemet, but I think this definitely made up for that.
I was honored to be added to the Leadership council of Texas tonight and I can’t wait to support this amazing team in the future. Thank you discovery for making being a teacher fun when sometimes we just get so overwhelmed with all we have to do. You definitely make us better at what we do.
Well it’s coming up quickly and I am scrambling to get all of the last minute details put together. I will be doing the presentation called “Kinders Can do Powerpoints Too!” again, with my friend Kristine. But, I will also be doing a new presentation about our summer camp. I think it has turned out pretty good and all of the information for it is finally completed which is a huge relief. Now I am trying to prepare all of the little extras like the intro slide show and the display stuff. I just hope that everyone that comes into the room will leave having learned at least one thing new from both presentations. The links for all of the Kinder powerpoint stuff can be found in an earlier blog, but the summer camp stuff is on our school site. Please take a minute to go check it out. Everything you need from permission slips to the book supply vendor are listed, so I hope it is enough to encourage someone you know to jump in head first and host a summer camp for your well deserving kiddos. I can’t tell you how amazing the experience was for me.
I will be presenting the Summer Camp presentation at TATN pre-conference on Tuesday morning at 10:30am in 19B and the Kinders Powerpoint presentation will be Wednesday at 9AM in… believe it or not, 19B. What are the chances? I will see you in Austin!
Promethean Planet