A very interesting take on new digital media by Howard Gardner

I was navigating around the Digital Generation Project on the Edutopia website, and I decided to watch this video from Howard Gardner. With all the enthusiasm about multitudinous tools available to our students to produce multimedia projects, it is important to temper that with legitimate cautions of educators. Kids certainly are adept at using these tools and at social networking, but may lack judgement in what they are producing and sharing with the world. While Mr. Gardner is certainly not opposed to this new wave in education, he makes an important points of how educators are still needed to help students navigate and make sense of this vast wealth of resources available at the click of a mouse or the touch of a finger.
Watch the video, and please comment on what you think about the topic.

Here is the link:
http://www.edutopia.org/digital-generation-howard-gardner-video

I tried to embed the video, but the embed code they gave me was not accepted by blogger. I will have to ask someone who knows more about html than I do to help me fix it.

Thanks, Carolyn

A Nice Example of using Skype in the Classroom

ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education) has been running a contest for teachers to upload videos showing innovative ways they are using technology in the classroom. In the video embedded below, you will see an example of kids connecting with an author. Sean Capelle authored this video which shows kids using Skype to ask question of Patrick Carmen, author of Skeleton Creek, a book the 5th graders had read. I caught some reference to the book having an element of technology embedded in it, as well. The video shows a realistic setting and is an inspiration for us to try something like this next year.

Annotation on Sept. 5, 2009
I just noticed that the embedded video was not in the post. I am editing the post in the .html view currently, and deleted the embedded code. I will now try to put in a direct link to the video so you can view it.
http://www.istevision.org/watch.php?vid=5616d271788a52a1dc35198186f202a986cb18fb
Let me know if you are interested in trying to set up something like this.

Fantastic 8th Grade Interteam, Interdisciplinary Project

Our eighth graders have been involved in a week long interteam, interdisciplinary experiment where they have been working in collaborative teams to produce projects with technology as an underlying tool to facilitate their learning. The students created propaganda videos about the American Revolutionary War and also did experiments on how music has an effect on mood or ability to recall information or heart rate. More on that later.

I was inspired to write this blog post when I came across this video which won an award from ISTE (International Society of Technology Education), and I thought it mirrored a lot of what went on at our school this week. Maybe we can use it as an inspiration and make a mash-up video of our own.



Here is the link to the video on the ISTE site:
http://www.istevision.org/watch.php?vid=d04f32b7af250b9a542b05b32c9b25ba4619555e
I loved the part where it questioned "Do we still get report cards?"