Angela Maiers Educational Services

Chalk Talk 2/29/08

Chalk Talk Friday represents conversations and brilliance I've discovered traversing my way through the Blogosphere.  From professional to personal development, these  are the posts and links have in some way touched my head or my heart.

Some great stuff this week!

• Getting Questions Answered by Candidates- Sheryl Nussbaum has a great piece on her blog, The 21st Century Collaborative. Her team asked the questions, and the candidates answered!
• Bookglutton.com this site is bringing this idea of community to the already thriving e-book world. You can have a real-time chat with someone in the same chapter or page as you. Book clubs 2.0-very cool!
• The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) announced the release of To Read or Not To Read: A Question of National Consequence. This expands and continues the discussion from the NEA's landmark report, Reading at Risk. The report explores statistics from more than 40 studies on the reading habits and skills of children, teenagers, and adult revealing the literary trends from all varieties of reading, including fiction and nonfiction genres in various formats such as books, magazines, newspapers, and online reading.
• Was Albert Einstein autistic? Check out this fascination article exploring the link between autistic traits and genius. Very interesting...

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Introducing Our Own Social Mediatician - Mike Sansone

Last year, I didn't know what a blog was - I thought it was a term from a Tolkien novel.

In the past eight months of working closely with Social Media guru, Mike Sansone, I have learned a whole new language exists, and a new world of learning opportunity has opened.

With excitement and honor, I'd like to introduce Mike as part of the Maiers Educational Services team (he'll be our Social Mediatician). By adding Mike's experience and expertise, we'll be offering workshops to schools and teachers in how to use these tools rather than ban them.

Several reasons this is so important:

• Our students are already using these tools away from the classroom. They are aching to co-create and collaborate with their peers
• Tools such as Blogs, Wikis, Facebook, LinkedIn and VisualCV are becoming so widely used, they may be a necessary component of our students lives as they reach the working world.
• If these tools are going to stick around (and they are), isn't it better to teach and train how to use them properly?

Not only does Mike share our passion for education and students, but our teaching styles are similar (we even use the same model of computer -- but I have better shoes!). We've already seen successes come out of the workshops we've held in tandem.

Mike will also continue in his role at ConverStations, working with businesses to engage in conversations with customers. Together, we'll be holding social media workshops, developing interactive learning environments (ILEs) and even doing some podcasting.

Feel free to contact Mike with questions about all things social media by email: mike@angelamaiers.com

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Engaging Our Youngest Minds

Building a language and literacy foundation happens well before students enter our classrooms. It is important to surround young children with many different language and literacy experiences. This presentation explores ways to provide students with rich, engaging environments to support their growth and development as readers,writers, and thinkers.

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Big Idea Teaching with Slideshare

My fellow blogging friend and photographer, Roelof has done it again; another amazing slideshow.Think about all the big idea conversations and cross curricular impact this Slideshare would encourage. 

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SlideShare is the world's largest community for sharing presentations & slideshows. You can upload your PowerPoint, OpenOffice, Keynote or PDF files, tag them, embed them into your blog or website, browse others' presentations, and comment on individual slides.

If that was enough to get you to the site-Slideshare also creates transcripts of your presentation that can be indexed by internet search engines and show up in search results. It's a great way to share your ideas with others, or to learn from other people. And it's completely free.

So, what are you waiting for? Check it out, share presentation with collegues and students, and let learning take the course~!

Related Posts:

What's the Big Idea?

Big Ideas in Nonfiction

Finding the Big Idea-It's As Easy as 1,2,3

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Eintsteins' Gift

In every field we are guided by the words and ideas of others. Yet, with all the scientifically based research and education gurus that have come and gone, I find myself most influenced by the words of Albert Einstein. One of Einsteins genius talents was, to say in a few words what others have taken chapters and books to articulate.

I recently received The New Quotable Einstein as a gift from a friend, so I pay it forward to you with the intellectual, spiritual, and empowering gifts of Einsteins words:

"Try to remember that a dedicated teacher is a valuable messenger from the past, and can be an escort to your future"

"Most teacher waste their time by asking question that are intended to discover what a pupils does not know, whereas the true art of questioning is to discover what the pupil does know or is capable of knowing.

"It is not so very important for a person to learn facts. Facts can be learned from books. The value of education is not the learning of the facts, but the training of the mind to think something that cannot be learned form the textbooks."

"It is the supreme are of the teacher to awaken the joy in creative expression and knowledge"

How about your favorites? 

Related Posts:
- The Beauty of His Genius
- The Successful Creative

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Exploring the "Basics" in "Back to the Basics"

EwanMcintosh, New Technologies Research Practitioner with Scotland’s national education agency, has got quite a conversation brewing around his post, Beyond the Three R's (Check out the comments!) Upon the long awaited release of Scotland's, Curriculum for Excellence, Ewan brings up some key issues regarding the notion of "basic" literacy in the digital landscape of the 21st Century.

Curricula advocates and policymakers in the United States and around the world talk about 21st Century reading and writing demands, but Scotland, is the first to put in black and white that teachers must help their students understand how to read social networks, blogs, games, comics - the whole panoply of literature young 21st Century citizens read.

In the School and Skills Ministers statement:

We teach children how to understand, analyse and communicate using words on paper and rightly so. We're not going to stop that - indeed we want people to be properly equipped with better literacy skills."At the same time, of course, we get our news and information more from TV and the internet than from the newspaper. We communicate through email and text messaging and social networking more than writing letters."

As Ewan prompts us to wonder...Is the 21st Century digital native resiliently less about Dickens, and more about Dr Kawashima, less books and more blogs.

I applaud Scotland for putting pen to paper and taking the lead in what so many reform efforts talk about. Will the United States and others follow? What say you?

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Twitter: Cutting to the Quick Conversation

I've just begun using Twitter to engage in worldwide conversations. It allows me to connect with and to brilliance regardless of geographic boundaries.

Though I'll share more depth and detail about Twitter in a future post, here's a glimpse at how valuable Twitter can be:

• David Warlick shared this: "In case anyone else is online, there's a Learning 2.0 conference going on in Colorado, Ustreamed at: http://tinyurl.com/2l2zee." (follow dwarlick on Twitter)
• Ewan McIntosh twittered this: "New on edu.blogs.com Social media for open education - the video: The LIFTers ha.. http://tinyurl.com/2ss9lf." (follow ewanmcintosh on Twitter)
• Mike Sansone mentioned this: "Dig the post from Arun ('Is Internet good for children?' - http://tinyurl.com/2rfxj8 ) Co-create!" (follow mikesansone on Twitter)

And this is just from this morning!  I'm gaining new friends (Tweeples) and new knowledge (Twideas?) quickly -- and you can follow me on Twitter too.  More to come...

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The Last Lecture-A Message About Life

This is a MUST SEE VIDEO for all! The Last Lecture is the story of 46year old, Carnegie-Mellon Professor Randy Pausch. His outlook on life is both remarkable and inspiring. Lessons to be had  for all. Randy Pausch-a new hero in my life! Enjoy the day with the ones you love!

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Chalk Talk 2/21/08

Chalk Talk Friday represents conversations and brilliance I've discovered traversing my way through the Blogosphere.  From professional to personal development, these  are the posts and links have in some way touched my head or my heart.

Some great stuff this week!

• Teacher Book Wizard , the online division of Scholastic, has launched Teacher Book Wizard. The new, free website enables teachers, librarians, and parents to search a database of more than 50,000 books from a variety of publishers to find just the right match for every child, according to reading level, interest, subject, and genre. Teachers and librarians can also download free lesson plans related to specific books and purchase many titles at teacher-discounted prices through Scholastic.com's Teacher Store.


• Lee Wilson at  The Education Business Blog has written a powerful series of posts dealing with  information overload. Lots of links to other blogs and books on the topic. Great Stuff, Lee! 


• The great folks at SharpBrains remind us that cars are not the only thing we must keep maintained. Read about tips to hlep keep your brain in tip top shape in: It's Not Only Cars That Deserve Good Maintanence 


• PBS Teacher Line-enhance your teaching and advance your career with high quality, standards-based graduate-level courses offer teachers the professional development opportunities they need in an accessible online format that makes learning fun, flexible and collaborative. 

 

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Presentation on Presentations

Scott at Do I Dare Disturb the Universe has the cure for "death by powerpoint". Check out his presentation on presentations for some great tips and strategies to make your points shine!

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