Sustainable Living

Anyone for sustainable living? I'll confess I've slipped terribly in my consideration for the planet earth since I was a young man. It is time for me to re-develop some balance. With that in mind, here are some links I found that speak to the issue:

Tiki the Penguin - Let's Make a Kinder World for Everyone
Sustainable Living Literature Collection for Children
NWEI - Changing Our World One Conversation at a Time
Wikipedia - Sustainable Living
Sustainable Living Network
EarthEasy - Ideas for Environomentally Sustainable Living
EnviroLink - Sustainable Living

No thought control

by Jenifer Van Deusen

Great line of thinking here! Fits in with the book, A Whole New Mind, that administrators here in Kittery have been reading. The blues tune illustrates some of Daniel Pink's point, that to thrive in this new century we need both our traditional Western logical-mathematical way of thinking AND more intuitive, creative, and playful thought - and a bunch of new resources. Consider/ respond to my reflections on this topic at http://notanotherbrick-kittery.blogspot.com/
and continue playing!

I've Got The Dial Up Blues

by Martha Thibodeau

The Dial Up Blues

Remote is my geography,
So make your photos small.
If it takes too long to load
I may not look at all.

CHORUS:
I've got the dial up blues.
My modem's 56 K,
Hardly fast enough for work,
Way too slow for play.

Watch a movie or a vlog?
You've gotta be crazy
Show me a transcript,
Download's slow and lazy.

(CHORUS)

Eliminate Elluminates,
My modem can't keep pace.
The video procrastinates
and the voice is in a race.

(CHORUS)

Even my beloved Skype
sometimes chooses to be bad,
so I drive the 2 miles to my school
for the WAN, of which I'm glad.

(CHORUS)


I wrote this about equity and access to online educational opportunities in rural vs. urban areas.

Add your own verse....

Reflecting on Sputnik

"The first educational question will not be 'what knowledge is of the most worth?' but 'what kind of humans beings do we want to produce?"

-- John Goodlad, director of The Center for Educational Renewal, University of Washington

Educational reform or educational renewal? Goodlad delineates the difference in the following article. Which approach do you prefer?

Reflecting on Sputnik: Linking the Past, Present, and Future of Educational Reform
Beyond McSchool: A Challenge to Educational Leadership

Grim Prospects

"We are engaged in a grim duel. We are beginning to recognize the threat to American technical supremacy which could materialize if ___________ succeeds in its ambitious program of achieving world scientific and engineering supremacy by turning out vast numbers of well-trained scientists and engineers...We have let our educational problem grow much too big for comfort and safety. We are beginning to see now that we must solve it without delay."

Anyone care to guess who said this, when it was said, and to what country he is referring?

Hint: It is not China, India . . . or even Japan.

Thoughts?

"Playing with Time"

Playing with Time is a great site for learning about the possibilities in time-lapse photography.

A neat piece of software for time-lapse video is call iStopMotion. Try the demo to see what you think.

Other Links:

Create a Time-Lapse Movie
CreativeTech: Create Time-lapse Videos with iMovie HD
Time Lapse Photography in Education

Will Transliteracy Be Coming to Maine?

by Ernie Easter

I read David Warlick's 2 Cents Worth this morning and was struck by his comment about transliteracy.

From David Warlick 2 Cents on 11/9/07

"I continue to be encouraged by the momentum that seems to be building toward modernizing classrooms with technology, but focusing on the why, and fueling with information and information skills. I opened up my chat program for the workshops yesterday, and someone who signed in as ASaylor started with a comment, “transliteracy is the topic.“ I’m still rolling this one around in my mind, but, according to the Production and Research in Transliteracy group blog,

Transliteracy is the ability to read, write and interact across a range of platforms, tools and media from signing and orality through handwriting, print, TV, radio and film, to digital social networks."

I've always been uncomfortable with the concept of “digital literacy” - feeling that something was missing as I've taught and discussed this concept with my class of 7th and 8th graders. It has always seemed to me that students (and their teachers) need to be more than just literate in today's digital world. It is the concept of the ability to “interact across a range of platforms, tools, and media” that I skirted with without being able to identify or articulate it.

This concept of transliteracy piqued my interest, but will it be the next development that pushes the envelope and causes some teachers to expand their ideas while simultaneously threatening to overwhelm others?

For further reading and discussion about Transliteracy see Production and Research in Transliteracy and Participatory Media Literacy

Ernie Easter
7th and 8th Grade Teacher
New Sweden School
New Sweden, Maine

New Sweden Student Exhibits at Maine Memory Network

Student-Led Conferences

I've been a fan of student-led conferences since the first time I used it as a fifth grade teacher. Until that time I had no idea of the power of this simple approach. Of course, like anything, preparation and practice make all the difference. Here is some background information:


Student Led Conferences
The Highs and Lows of Parent-Teacher Conferences
Student-Led Conference

What is your experience with student-led conferences?


TLC, itziane's photostream. 7 Mar 2007. 12 April 2007 <http://http://flickr.com/photos/fitziane/456273432/>.