Maine Connects with the World

LMS Links

"Decades" Links

"Inservice Insanity - One Year Later"

Wicked Decent Learning Episode 62


WDL Blog



Photo Credit

MICDL Website Up and Running

The Maine International Center for Digital Learning site is now open for business. Open up an account here.

Decades Research Project at Lewiston Middle School

I'm listening to the introduction to the LMS 7th grade language arts research project today. Teachers, Patricia Langlier and Susan Grondin, are enthusiastic and pushing the boundaries in developing this unit. I'll be working with their students tomorrow in developing research skills and in helping them to find specific websites that can help them. We'll also make use of stickies in taking notes and look at ways of saving time and energy in citing sources.

Decades at LIM Resources Wiki
MARVEL - Maine's Virtual Library
Research at Lim Resources Wiki
Finding and Organizing Internet Resources
Who(m) Do We Trust?
Lewiston Middle School Website

Arne Duncan on $100 Billion for Education

Technology Adoption: 4 Step Process

from Marc Prensky at Edutopia: Adopt and Adapt: Shaping Tech for the Classroom

1. Dabbling
2. Doing old things in old ways.
3. Doing old things in new ways.
4. Doing new things in new ways

Marc Prensky's Essential 21st Century Skills
Marc Prensky's Open Letter to the Obama Administration

MLTI 2009

Shayna Malyata

On Thursday I had the pleasure of meeting and working awhile with Shayna Malyata of Lewiston Middle School. It became immediately clear that she believes in connecting personally with students and finding ways to engage them in the learning process. As part of her work, we spent a few minutes looking at iMovie. Shayna already had an educational purpose and raw footage available. She only desired a crash course in editing . . . which is what we did. In my line of work as an integrator, that sequence is ideal: Just-in-time learning with a reason in mind for using a tool. See Grappling's Technology & Learning Spectrum.

Check out the links below to some of Shayna's work:

Kavango Connection

Lewiston Middle School Civil Rights Team

Memoirs for Change: The Lewiston-Auburn Memoirs Project (LAMP)

Memoirs for Change

Storytellers for Peace

Sun Journal: "LMS Students Share Stories As They Write Memoirs"

College Course Videos

Arne Duncan on Education Stimulus

The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns, as it were, instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink. ~ George Orwell

Education Week Interview with Education Secretary Arne Duncan from Education Week on Vimeo.

Stimulus Money and Federal Mindset

Will Richardson at Weblogg-ed: "How to Waste the Education Piece of the Stimulus"

Diane Ravitch at Bridging Differences: "Is Arne Duncan Really Margaret Spellings in Drag?

Melanie Smollin: "Education's Piece of the Stimulus Pie - Following the Money"

Schools Matter: "Meier and Konsky on Duncan"

21st Century Literacy

Travels with Earth Bear

Ask Jim Moulton questions using Google Tools to Learn about India.

The Power of Wordle

by Becky Ranks

Having just completed a day in Bangor with teachers there who are working on Inquiry-based Instruction and Essential Questions, my partner in crime, Jim Burke and I were very impressed with many of the things that are happening there in Grades four through 8. We were part of an all day professional development experience that reached all content areas. Jim and I covered the language arts curriculum and presented resources and ideas for language arts teachers.We were just a small part of a day arranged by Martha Thibodeau through the Title IID grant. One of the resources presented was Wordle. I am sure most are familiar with Wordle, but if not it makes wonderful word clouds. Last night while watching CNN's commentary on President Obama's press conference, the commentators used his words in a Wordle word cloud. It was blown up to a tremendous size, and they were able to pinpoint the words that were used most often and it highlighted the power of words. The Bangor teachers were thrilled with exposure to this new resource, and now its reach to mainstream media has taken it to real world uses and shows another use beyond our imagination.

Rainforest Podcast at MVMS

Podcasting at LIM Resources Wiki
Mountain Valley Middle School 7th Grade Team

Maine Laptops and the Future

Essential Questions:

1. What have we learned from the first 7 years of MLTI?

2. What might work even better in the future?

MLTI Laptop Information (2009 Deployment) at LIM Resources Wiki (Feel free to edit (update).

Discuss on LIM Online Community

Middle Level Education in Maine

A Framework of Twelve Core Practices for Maine Middle Grades Schools Developing Full Academic, Personal and Social Potential for Maine Young Adolescents.

"Merit Badge" at Wicked Decent Learning

WDL Blog

Can You Use Someone Else's Curriculum?

by Nicole Ouellette

My sister is an elementary school teacher. To me, that makes her an automatic saint, no documented miracles necessary.

She is also a young teacher in a small school and moves around grade wise: first rate last year, second grade this year, and third grade next year. I asked her about a recent teacher in-service day. "At least I got my math curriculum done," she said "you know, for the next teacher." And that got me to thinking about curriculums as usable documents.

Flashback to the experiences of my friends becoming teachers. Some entered classrooms where the retired teacher had left behind binders and file cabinets full of their "curriculum", presumably for them to use. Being young and overwhelmed, in the end most of it ended up being tossed out. On one hand, this is certainly a shame to have all that work gets thrown out but on the other, who wants to shift through someone else's organizational logic or stream of conscious thought? I certainly wouldn't.

To me the only way a curriculum is usable by more than one person is if it's very general and able to fit within a few typed pages. I would tend to look online for ideas for lesson plans but in general I want to plan on going to teach a concept myself. The fact that I would have to teach meteorology in April? No problem. The fact that I have to use what I think is your crappy lesson on clouds? Not so much.

(Come to think of it, all I wanted in the last school I worked in was to look at the school's curriculum and for two years I asked. I've still never seen it.)

Do any of your schools use a curriculum in a real way? If so how can we best share it amongst other teachers and with the public?

Inquiry Based Science Lesson: Bangor 3-20-09

by Ron Smith

Session Link:

Google Sites Web Page

Response Question:

You have now performed an inquiry-based activity and explored information about inquiry-based learning in science.

What do you think makes a lesson inquiry based?
What can you change in the science activities you do with a class to move them from closed to directed to open inquiry?

Make a list of criteria important to include in an inquiry-based science activity.