Angela Maiers Educational Services

Cute Shoes and Cool Widgets

If you've seen Angela work, you're familiar with her love of cute shoes ("Aren't these sooo cute?!?")

Well lately, we've been showing a lot of cute videos and presentations too. So I thought we should make them available to you along the sidebar of her site. We've added a few cool "widgets" so you can find the most recent nuggets we've shared.

Presentations
All of Angela's presentations eventually appear on SlideShare - and along the sidebar on the right, you can find the most recent.

Videos
The videos Angela shares, including the Funny Teacher and 21st Century Learner videos, now appear on the right side thanks to VodPod

Resources
Angela aggregates all her resources shared across Web 2.0 sites with a tool called FriendFeed. In this widget, everything Angela puts forth online -- blog post, bookmark, twitter message, presentation, podcast...whatever...appears in the FriendFeed widget.

Now all we have to do is find a widget to show off all those cute shoes!

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An Education Is...

An education is...

Fill in the blank. I'll start:
An education is key to your dreams coming true.

Your turn! (What a great conversation starter to get ready for the new school year)

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265 Blog to Show (OFF)

The always generous and wonderfully creative, Liz Strauss, has once again rolled out the red carpet to show off others. Her most recent community builder, showcases 265 Blogs, complete with purpose, tag line, and blogging tips. I am so proud to be a part of this community!

Like your own virtual auto show for blogs, there is something for everyone here. Enjoy the show!

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I LOVE Sir Ken Robinson!

I am a huge fan of Sir Ken Robinson, and share his amazing TED video on creativity and education with every audience I can. Even if you saw the TED talk, you will enjoy this 15-minute presentation delivered in this year to an international crowd of school superintendents at the Apple Education Leadership Summit in San Francisco.

Click on the image to view the video on the edutopia site.

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Take a "Looky" at Lookybook

If you are like me, there is never enough time or money to keep up with the growing repertoire of children's picture books. I have found a great tool that can save you on both. Lookybook is a wonderful new site for teachers and parents who don't have the budget or time to find the latest and greatest in children's picture books.

You can either go to the Lookybook site or embed one of the books in your own blog or wiki as I did above. (click on the "eyeballs" to go to a larger version). This is also great for doing whole group minilessons or reading aloud with your entire class.

As with many Web 2.0 tools that allow for embedding, just look for the code and copy/paste. There are new books being added each day, so check it out often. It is easy to see why Time magazine voted this site, one of the year's 50 best! Enjoy!

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Chalk Talk - 7/25/08

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!

• OK-You ALL have to try this! Dialectize your blog/twitter-read your voice as Elmer Fudd, Redneck, Pig Latin  ”
• CLWG: Children's Literature Web Guide: A great guide for Children's Literature
• Great resources for teaching with the brain in mind
• Keynote video from Micheal Wesch - it's an hour long, but very good!
• Search Flickr by color! Very cool- From the labs at Ideeinc

Happy Summer Reading!

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Teaching with Aloha

In her book, Managing with Aloha, my friend, Rosa Say teaches businesses and managers the power of doing business the Aloha way. She writes about applying Hawaiian principles and values in today's challenging business environments.

Rosa has taught me that our values drive our behavior. Whether we are doing our leading and teaching in the boardroom or in the classroom, these values make our work worthwhile.

As I reflect on these past two weeks of work with teachers in Hawaii, this is what Teaching with Aloha has meant to me:

We began our week's Literacy Institute with ‘Imi ola-meaning mission and vision. By defining clearly what our work as educators was about. We do not teach to cover curriculum, for the standards, to do well on the test. We teach for understanding. Our mission encapsulated in three simple words: TO ENHANCE UNDERSTANDING

The classroom was a buzz each day as teachers grew closer, shared more generously, and took more risks knowing that our goals were unified. Lōkahi -harmony, unity and collaboration filled our days.

With Ho‘omau- meaning perseverance and persistence, we worked hard and while demonstrating Kuleana-personal responsibility and accountability. I never once heard, we can't or yes, but. We worked in the spirit of "how can we", and "when do we start"

The ‘Ike loa or knowledge, wisdom, and learning was deep and immense, and for that I close with Mahalo for living in thankfulness of this experience is what I feel.

As I bring back, a few pineapples and lei's, I also bring the spirit of Aloha to the mainland where I live and teach. These Hawaiian words may seem foreign to my teachers at first, but, like me they will soon discover that these are new words for universal values.

Teaching with Aloha is in every dedicated educator. As our new school year approaches, I can not think of a better way to begin the teaching and learning conversation than with the heart of Aloha.

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Thanks for the Memories Honolulu (& Animoto)!

If they say a picture is worth a thousand words-then I say an Animoto video is worth a thousand memories! Enjoy!

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Reflections of Paradise-Honolulu Literacy Institute

When I tell my friends and family that I am traveling to Hawaii for "work", you can imagine the kind of looks I get.

The true "paradise" for me is the learning. This image represents just two days of learning conversations at the Honolulu Literacy Institute.

After listing out what we had been working on, teachers ranked their top choices of lessons and tools shared. This exercise proved to be not only a reflection tool, but a reminder of how much we know and can do when given the time to just learn.

I will be sharing more about these tools and strategies in upcoming posts, but here are a few things to try out to get your learning juices flowing:

-Wordle
-BigUniverse
-3-2-1- Big Idea Assessment
-Dipity
-Animoto
-Slideshare
-GoogleLitTrip
-CogDog-Digital Storytelling Resource

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More Flooding in Iowa

This weekend brought more rain and more water to our already drenched and tornado stricken state. The Red Cross and other organizations are doing what they can to help, but keeping up with Mother Nature is still a challenge.

Fellow friend and Iowa blogger, Andy Drish is doing his part to make a dent in the relief efforts. You can buy this Fantabulous T-shirt and help out.  T-shirts are only $15 and $9 goes directly to the flood victims.   

You can order them at: http://www.thesmashsite.com/shop/floodrelief.html

Thanks for your help, and hugs to Andy for this effort!

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