Hey out there in the digital universe

Whew- maintaining a blog can be challenging!
 Thanks to everyone from Forums 23 and 24 of the Teacher Institute who contributed to the great discussion around the Dennis Sparks article. Forums 25 and 26 will begin in September.This blog will remain as a source for sharing information. We will continue to evolve our use of digital resources for learning- both adult and student. This blog will remain as a source for sharing information but be on the lookout for new resources- particularly those that will connect all Teacher Leadership Institute teachers- both graduates and current participants.

If you're a Facebooker and you haven't "liked" the Arkansas Leadership Academy already, I encourage you to do so.

Hope everyone had a great summer and is ready for a new and exciting year of learning!

Amanda Linn

Interim Assignment Discussion

Recently you have read A Call to Creativity by Dennis Sparks. This was originally presented as part of the 10th Annual Colloquium, "The Quest for Educational Transformation: Ideals and Realities". It was interactive presentation with sections for discussion and debate. Find the comment that relates to the discussion prompt to which you want to respond and begin or continue the conversation.

Looking forward to the discussions to come!
Julie

Talking the talk AND Walking the walk

Many schools have some type of reading they ask students to complete over the summer. Here is an interesting blog post about a school faculty that applied their core belief  "We will not ask our students to do something as learners, that we are not willing to do ourselves." to summer reading.

Faculty Summer Reading & A Mosaic of Learning

Not to spoil it for you, but the teachers also made "projects" about their books AND they gave themselves "choice" regarding the project.

Summer is still a ways off... how could this be adapted for the benefit of teacher learning now???

Twittering in the Classroom

My Twitter feed has been on fire this week with great information and links to resources that are just waiting to be used in the classroom!

This blog has great resources on a variety of topics but what caught my eye were the ones on Twitter in the classroom-

http://langwitches.org/blog/

Some sample resources:

Twitter HOTS & Establishing a Twitter Routine in the Classroom

PDF to Download: Twitter Policy and Rationale

If you have the Twitter fever, share how you are using it with student and/or adult learners in the comment section.

Digital Citizenship film festival

We want our students to access electronic resources for learning just as we accessed the library and the  card catalogue (if you don't know this card catalogue I speak of, ask a "more experienced" teacher  or do a Google image search), just as we were taught good citizenship for the library, students need help understanding what it means to be a good digital citizen.

This Edutopia Five Minute Film Festival features videos on digital citizenship
http://www.edutopia.org/blog/film-festival-digital-citizenship

In addition to the videos there are numerous links to other resources about navigating the digital world.

Andrew Churches wonderfully rich wiki "Educational Origami" also addresses digital citizenship with information as well as tools for assessing digital citizenship.
http://edorigami.wikispaces.com/

After you click on the link, scroll down the left side- the digital citizenship resources are further down the page. I suspect you may be distracted by all the cool things listed before digital citizenship... if you aren't distracted, I'm a little worried for you... these resources are a real treasure.

As we discussed in session 1, students spend a lot of time with teachers throughout the course of their schooling. For some of our students, the adults they know at school may be the most stable presence in their lives.Part of our mission as educators should be to help them learn to safely and gracefully navigate the digital world.

How is digital citizenship addressed in your school?

Use the comments section of this post to share ideas, ask questions and continue the conversation!

CCSS meets PLN

The link below will take you to a great blog post about using electronic resources to build resource sharing networks for the implementation of the Common Core State Standards.

For those of you following me on Twitter, I "tweeted' this information as well :)


http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2012/09/12/03newell.h32.html?tkn=PMLFC5GNUDFOdOz0n4CeqgjQd4q1Rr6nGZk8&cmp=clp-edweek

Enjoy!

Amanda

Forum 24, Session 1 Resources

Here is a list (as of 9:30, Sept. 12) of the resources shared:

Ted.com
ed.ted.com
tagxedo.com
wordle.com
dropbox.com
livebinders.com
pinterest
diigo.com
delicious
todaysmeet
twitter
tinyurl.com
learnzillion
getaflipchart.blogspot.com
keepvid.com
utubedownloader
Digital Blooms

Scroll down through the flipchart to see more and more and more resources.