Tristan and the Shark

Get a Voki now!



My nephew Tristan and I were sitting in his mother's (my sister) hospital room the day his sister was born listening to all the other conversations. While we weren't directly involved, I thought I would find something online from my sister's laptop that Tristan would enjoy. We didn't have much time, so I opened up Voki. He picked his own avatar and told me what to write(it was too noisy to record his voice). This was accomplished very promptly, so we were ready when everyone else was ready to eat lunch.

Tristan loved Voki and told me he wants to get a Pokemon avatar next time. He would like to record his voice also.

Parents, NOT ComCast, Shape Internet Traffic

As Oliver Widder so eloquently expressed in a recent Geek and Poke, it is a parent's responsibility to help shape their child's internet traffic, BUT ISPs were properly slapped down by the latest ruling against Comcast. The ISP giant managed their customers' internet usage better than the most strict parent.

Federal Communications Commission ruled against choking down the internet pipe when consumers connect to ANY legal internet services, and spanks COMCAST down; inviting consumers to keep an eye on their ISP's for similar bad behavior, that just happens to be illegal.

Related articles and blogs:
FCC net-neutrality-wonks: traffic-shaping open-kimono, plz

It seems that Canadians do not have the same protections from the Big Parent ISP.

BubbleSnaps: Quick and Easy

BubbleSnap was recommended by a colleague in Plurkadia, so I tried it out. Whether you have unlimited time to think of a clever saying to go in the bubble, or you need something NOW, BubbleSnap will work for you.

My colleague used shared how she used BubbleSnap to develop an introductory letter for her students. I think another use would be to develop a captioned BubbleSnap picture to be used as an anticipatory set, questions on a test or any number of other educational ideas.

I downloaded, captioned, emailed, saved and copied my sample BubbleSnap to blog in under 5 minutes. You can also use your Flickr pictures.

BubbleSnap is easy to use, and the steps are very straightforward. You can email, print or blog your BubbleSnap. I recommend it for anyone, but especially for teachers and students.

Blog Action Day Returns

Blog Action Day is back for 2008, and you can participate. This would be an excellent project based learning activity for any level of student or classroom bloggers.

It is easy to sign up, and you will get a widget to encourage your friends and readers to participate. The name of your blog, podcast or other online mode will be listed among the various participants.

Plus, a great amount of attention is turned to the worthy cause that is the focus of Blog Action Day each year. This year the Blog Action Day topic is Poverty.

Last year, on October 15, 2007, millions of my Blog Action Day friends and I wrote on the Topic of 2007: the environment. Since much of my biology training and teaching experience is in the area of the environment, I decided to join this worthy cause.

I focused on a living, migratory animal whose very existence depends on a clean environment and a healthy ecosystem, the Monarch Butterfly. Their migratory path from Canada to Mexico each year takes them through our area. My Blog Action Day posting, n2teaching: Momentous Monarch Migration, revealed just how spectacular and environmentally relevant their yearly migration can be.

Participating in Blog Action Day is a most enjoyable LEARNING experience. I recommend it to all my readers.

Blog Action Day 2008 Poverty from Blog Action Day on Vimeo.

Hop To It!

Journey North events begin in September. You and your classes will learn so much in this enjoyable, collaborative environment.

I encourage you to check out the various science projects listed on the Year-at-a-Glance Timeline that include migrations,tulip gardens,Climate Connections, mystery class and a variety of other activities that will fit into any science curriculum from Kindergarten through high school.

Getting to Know You - First Days

Photo by woodleywonderworks
Attribution License

In the first days of a new school year, teachers want to draw each student into their realm of learning and be included in each child's realm of learning. While there are as many ways to do this as there are teachers and students in our schools, I would suggest picture books can easily engage students. Presenting stories of our common experience, books reach out to students and teachers, across time and space, drawing them together, encouraging valuable learning opportunities.

Select this link to read a short discussion among my Personal Professional Learning network about children's literature we use to start the school journey. n2teaching thinks it is time to read Tar Beach and When the Relatives Came- Plurk.com

Two books, Tar Beach and The Relatives Came, share the common themes of family and story-telling. They engage children and fascinate adults. During the first days of school, these are the types of books you can use to encourage your students to become a family of learners with you.

Whether a child's family lives in the city or the country, these books will draw them in with a sense of awe and wonder for childhood past and present.

You can use these books to prime the pump at the well of common experience. The stories draw out each child's favorite family stories like cups of fresh water. In this way, children and teachers join each others’ common experience.

Photo by Carla216
Attribution-NoDerivs License

A shared experience, enhanced through storytelling, helps everyone believe in the value of the students and teacher’s common learning. It helps people make choices based on the belief in their reciprocal values. What are these reciprocal values? Even though our family groups may seem different, there are common factors between all.

Choices Teachers Make

The core philosophy of the PLN, Personal Learning Network, sometimes called by a variety of names like: Personal Learning Environment(PLE), Personal Learning Community (PLC), Professional Learning Network (PLN), or Professional Learning Community(PLC), remains the collaboration among your peers, professional in their field of expertise, in my case: teaching. When other people, who work to educate and inform their best practices, share their experiences and reflect on how these best practices informed their actions, they become your teacher. This is the reciprocal teaching factor that plays such an important role in effective professional development.

Relating to teachers' choices in learning to know our students and using that information to guide best practice is my focus. Children's interests in the 21st century can be boosted by all teachers and parents, not just by those with advanced resources. With that caveat in mind, this advertisement video does illustrate the point of how we can use technology as a tool to enhance learning while we get to know our students.

Today, I was reading blog posts among those from my PLN, and I was so drawn to this post, Successful Teaching: Highlighting Students’ Talents, by my colleague/friend, Pat Hensley, also known as loonyhiker, I knew I NEEDED to respond to it. This poignant story of how the teacher can validate or deny a person's ability to achieve in school based on their perceptions prompted me to make this response to Pat's thoughtful reflection of best practice as she experienced it. She reminded me that quality teaching is a choice that teachers make with help from a quality learning community.

I appreciated your reflective questions relating your experiences with your skateboard boy and the yoyo boy in the video. Children have hobbies, and frequently these hobbies are reflections of what they would want to do for work as adults. I am always concerned when these talents are dismissed out of hand.



While other teachers dismissed skateboard boy and his talents, you did not. "I would ask him why he was so good for me and not others and he looked at me and said, 'You like me and wouldn’t let me get away with any of that.' He felt the other teachers didn’t like him but he knew I cared and that made a big difference to him."

I am sure the other teachers may have thought they liked him, but as Dr. William Glasser, MD says in his classic, The Quality School Teacher:
"...we will work hard for those we care for(belonging), for those we respect and who respect us(power), for those with whom we laugh (fun), for those who allow us to think and act for ourselves (freedom), and for those who help us to make our lives secure (survival). The more that all five of these needs are satisfied in our relationship with the (teacher)manager who asks us to do the work, the harder we will work for that (teacher)manager.

Teachers also need opportunities to make appropriate choices, and they deserve principal teachers who are lead managers.

Sometimes not all teachers have the opportunity to work with those who will bring out their best, so they revert to a more coercive stance. I believe schools can be greatly helped if everyone works to make their school The Quality School I hope you don't mind that I have included a link to one of my blog posts, n2teaching: The Quality School Teacher, that relates to yours.

Thanks for this thought-provoking post that reminds me why teachers teach.