Friday, May 15, 2009

Setting Sail - Call for Proposals

2009 MLTI Summer Institute

Maine Maritime Institute ~ Castine, Maine

July 29 – 31, 2009

Call for Proposals and “Save the Dates”



From MLTI Team:


Mark your calendar for the summer’s most reasonably priced, high quality professional development opportunity. Present to colleagues and come for free!





If you are interested in attending, keep watching our website for updates on sessions and registration information.


If you are interested in presenting at the Institute, then please keep reading!



Workshop topic proposals should include:


Hands-on creative and imaginative professional development opportunities;


Interdisciplinary connections between the arts and creative thinking in other Maine Learning

Results content areas utilizing technology are preferred;


Innovative instruction, curriculum and assessment;


Encouraging links between at arts disciplines (music, dance, theater or visual art) and content areas (Career and Education Development, English Language Arts, Health Education and

Physical Education, Mathematics, Science and Technology, Social Studies, World Languages) to promote differentiated instruction and universal access;


Unique learning opportunities for educators utilizing technology to impact teaching and learning for all students, and


Open Education Resources (OER) that support the content/curriculum areas addressed.


Collaborative presentations are encouraged!


Important information:

  • Sessions will be half-day sessions including a mid-point break.
  • The major focus is on 7-12 educators but all are welcome.
  • Participants are required to have a laptop, preferably a Mac with either the middle high school MLTI image or similar software.
  • The planning committee encourages you to seek out a colleague you’ve been thinking about developing curriculum ideas with and make it happen to share your creati work with at this conference!

Registration, food, lodging are waived for presenters. Mileage is reimbursed and 24 contact hours awarded for presenters.


Email proposals and questions to Juanita Dickson at juanita.dickson@maine.gov. Proposals need to be submitted by May 22, 2009. Presenters will be notified by June 1, 2009.


Proposals must include ALL of the following information. If you are submitting a collaborative presentation proposal, please ensure you include the name, email, role etc for the additional presenters.


Presenter(s) Information

  • Name of presenter
  • Email addresses – school and summer
  • SUMMER contact phone number
  • Position – i.e. teacher, grade level and subject
  • School name


Session Information

  • Title of session
  • 1-2 sentence description of session including content area and grade level
  • Brief description of session (approx.100 words)
  • Presenter biographical information (50 words max)
  • Equipment needs, room arrangement required for session

Communicating with Cartoons, Comics, and Graphic Novels


Barbara Greenstone presented a superb webinar last week titled Promoting Literacy with Cartoons, Comics, and Graphic Novels. The recorded session is here.




Web Notebook by Barbara: Promoting Literacy with Cartoons, Comics, and Graphic Novels.

Barbara's Blog: Teaching with Comics

Earlier Posts on LIM

Thread on LIM Online Community: "Digging Deeper into Comics"

LIM Wiki Resources on Cartoon Creation


Scott McCloud on comics in his life:

Thursday, May 14, 2009

Talking Laptop

Cynthia Curry is our resident expert on universal design and getting our laptops to talk to us. Check out her recent blog post on the topic here.

Cynthia's Recorded Online Workshop

Video Tutorials from YouTube:

High School Textbooks

With 1 to 1 laptops in our high schools, will there really be any reason to keep buying paper textbooks?

I submit that these sites alone would be more than adequate for replacing U.S. History content information found in expensive commercial paper textbooks:

Lessons at Hippocampus
Open Digital Textbook at WikiBooks
American History Digital Textbook
Digital History
Best History Sites
MARVEL - Maine's Virtual Library

Similar online textbooks and quality content can be found in other subject areas.

Questions: How much does your school district budget per student annually for high school textbooks? Anyone have numbers to share?

Your Thoughts?


Earlier Post on Algebra Textbooks
Earlier Post: Textbooks vs. Open Source Learning


Monday, May 11, 2009

Consumption



The Story of Stuff

Worldwatch Institute

Wikipedia: Conspicuous Consumption

Exponential Growth

Exponential Growth at Teachers' Domain
Exponential Growth Calculator

The Crash Course by Chris Martenson

How It All Ends

Technological Singularity

Algebra Lesson Plan: Skeeter Populations & Exponential Growth

Exponential Growth Lesson Plan

ALEX: Exponential Growth & Decay

WebQuests on Exponential Growth

TrackStar on Exponential Growth

Digital Media for the Classroom

Check this site out for some excellent resources on using digital media in the classroom and PD.

Featuring the Work of Paula Vigue

Today we are featuring the work of Paula Vigue of Winslow Junior High School. Paula is a second year teacher who came to teaching after a first career in the business world. Her enthusiasm for teaching science shines through in her moodle pages and blog posts.

Paula explained to me that the moodle page was started a few years ago by her mentor, Gene Roy, and that she has added, deleted, and modified resources and activities since that time. Her blog was started during a course at the UMO Maine Technology Institute.

She would also like to add that she has been fortunate enough to have some wonderful professors, most from Thomas College, a very supportive staff at WJHS, friends, and a supportive family (her boys are the ones that talked her into teaching). Without them, and the "listserve" that has provided many ideas and links to look at, she says she would not be where she is today.

Paula states:
"The most important part... the students. They make the teaching all worth while. I want to make learning fun and engaging for them so that they will want to continue learning. The smiles and the "aha" moments when students finally understand something is such a reward. A teacher at Karlsruhe American High School in Germany was the person that got me into the "I want to continue learning" mode. He was the first teacher I had that really made me enjoy learning. I still love to learn myself, and every day has a learning experience for me."

It's always a delight to see good use of free tools by an enthusiastic classroom teacher.

Winslow Junior High Moodle Front Page

WJHS Noteshare Server