Digital Tools for PLC's

Here is a deck of slides I compiled for working with several of my schools on Digital Tools for PLC's. My inspiration/impetus for presenting this information comes from Bill Ferriter who recently presented here in Evansville on this very subject. Several of the examples shared are his. For anyone interested in this subject I highly recommend his blog, The Tempered Radical, and book Building a Professional Learning Community at Work: A Guide to the First Year.

Storytelling One Second At A Time

Credit for this idea goes to @hughtheteacher

Making the Most out of Every Second

60 Seconds of Mesquite ISD

It's amazing how one simple shared link on a Twitter feed can open a tremendous idea for engaging students and utilizing technology in meaningful ways. @hughtheteacher shares how he has adapted a Montblanc campaign called Seconds of Beauty (sample below) into a storytelling project for his students. The original Montblanc campaign has resulted in truly beautiful videos created by combining sixty, one-second video clips into a one minute story.

2012 Election Education Resources

Obama photo by Pete Souza, The Obama-Biden Transition Project
Romney photo by Gage Skidmore

The 2012 Election is just weeks away and is generating tremendous interest among students and adults alike. This great interest is something that can be tapped by teachers in order to make content relevant and engaging to students, and there is certainly no lack of resources available to help do it. Our digital culture is changing the way elections are run, and providing opportunities for critical thinking and analysis of candidates' statements, positions, rhetoric and records. It is also providing opportunities to engage in the process of election digitally, through Twitter, Facebook, websites and other tools. What a tremendous gift to give a child - an opportunity to learn how to engage with information, evaluate it, reflect upon it, and formulate an opinion they can back with facts.

Here are some resources to help teach the 2012 election in your classroom, regardless of your content area. If you have some more I'd love to hear about them - please share them in the comments below!

• The New York Times
• Our Election 2012 Unit: An Overview
• From the website: In this unit, we’re putting teenagers front and center by having them consider these basic essential questions — questions central to any election — through the lens of a hypothetical situation in which the voting age has been lowered to 13. (1) Who are the candidates? (2) What are the issues? (3) How are the candidates trying to win the election? (4) Who do you think should win the election?
• The United States of Numeracy: The Math of a Presidential Campaign
• A presidential race is a gift to American history and civics classes. But it’s also rife with learning opportunities for math students, too. Here are 10 suggestions for looking at the campaign season through an arithmetical lens, using New York Times resources.
• FiveThirtyEight Blog - Provides information on the electoral college and predictions on where candidates stand
• The Electoral Map: Building A Path To Victory - Allows you to create your own scenarios with an electoral map
• Worksheet: Evaluate a Debate
• Worksheet: Television Commercial Analysis Chart
• Milestones: Mitt Romney - An interactive timeline of Mitt Romney’s life and career
• Milestones: Barack Obama - An interactive timeline of Barack Obama’s life and career

• NBC Learn
• Election Math
• Decision 2012 Election Timeline
• The Newseum is a 250,000 square foot “museum of news” in Washington, D.C. Its Digital Classroom team has created an interactive “Election Timeline” that utilizes NBC Learn videos to trace the major media moments of Decision 2012.
• Weekly Thought Starters

Giza 3D Experience

Here is an absolutely terrific way to explore ancient Egypt and bring it to life for your students. Even the most dynamic presentation of static images or even video simply cannot compare to being able to walk around and explore on your own. The entire site is based on scientific research and is a joint project between Dassault Systèmes, Harvard University and the Museum of Fine Arts Boston and was headed by Harvard Professor Peter Manuelian. It took nearly ten years to complete and is based on over 100 years of archaeology and research. You are free to explore on your own or you can take a guided tour.

Classroom Application:
There are many possibilities for sites like this. Use the site to explore in class on an interactive white board while you explain key concepts or ideas.You can also assign the guided tour as homework. You might create tour of your own or perhaps a scavenger hunt where students work to find answers to questions within the virtual Giza.

Special Notes:

• The website does require the installation of a plugin in order to render the 3D images. On my Mac it was a painless process. If you have problems post in the comments and we'll see if we can figure it out together!


• The site is very data intensive and takes a while to load. You may need to load it in advance in order to have it ready on demand during class time.

YouTube Highlights:

Did You Know?/Shift Happens

From Shift Happens:
Did You Know? originally started out as a PowerPoint presentation for a faculty meeting in August 2006 at Arapahoe High School in Centennial, Colorado, United States. The presentation "went viral" on the Web in February 2007 and, as of June 2007, had been seen by at least 5 million online viewers. Today the old and new versions of the online presentation have been seen by at least 20 million people, not including the countless others who have seen it at conferences, workshops, training institutes, and other venues.

This version, updated to early 2012, was created by David S. Rose (@davidsrose) for use in the Finance, Entrepreneurship and Economics program at Singularity University (singularityu.org). All of the contributors to this presentation believe that it is only through conversation, and subsequent action, that we will achieve the best possible education for our children. You are encouraged to download and share this video, and help keep it current by contributing updated versions to the ShiftHappens Wiki.

Google World Wonders Project

Imagine taking your students on a field trip to Stonehenge... or perhaps to Independence Hall... maybe Pompeii? What, no time or funds to make such a trip? Well fortunately for us the folks at Google have applied their Street View technology to many important world sites making them available for virtual field trips.

Choose your destination from the drop-down menu at the top of the page and Google flies you in for a closer look. You can walk the site using your mouse to look up, down, left and right as well as to zoom. Google also offers teacher's guides under the "Education" tab at the top of the page.

Classroom Application: Use the site to lead students through an investigation of sites relevant to classroom instruction. Consider using it instead of static images to increase interest and engagement. You might also pose a set of questions to your students about a certain location, asking them to find and justify their answers by searching the site.

Link: Google World Wonders Project

The Periodic Table of Videos

Here is a terrific website that links each element on the periodic table to an informative video about that element. The explanations include history, stories, and experiments and would be a perfect compliment to classroom instruction. Provide links via MyBigCampus or Angel/Blackboard to have students view them at home.

Classroom Application: Have students watch specific videos at home before classroom discussion. Incorporate the videos into lessons to demonstrate elements you are unable to show in the classroom.

A Step Further: Ask students to use these videos as a model to create similar explanatory videos on other subjects. As they work to explain what they know in a concise and understandable way they will be engaging in Understanding, Applying, Analyzing, and Creating as defined by Bloom's Taxonomy.

Link: The Periodic Table of Videos