In Their Own Words: Calling All Middle Schools
Our little school is “walking” I-80 from DuBois, Pennsylvania all the way to San Francisco, California and we’d love to visit with you along the way.
To make this wellness project more than just laps in gym, we are asking you to introduce your middle school and tell us something about your area. You can see (and hear) the VoiceThread proposal by Mrs. Sperling by clicking here.
The proposal is just that. If we get some interest we’ll have our students make a voice thread that will act as the network for the meet and greet.
If you’re interested, or know another middle school that may be, just drop us an email. dsperling@dasd.k12.pa.us or me, at kpruitt@dasd.k12.pa.us.
Good VoiceThreads make good neighbors I always say!
Ken Pruitt
Tech Integrator, DuBois, PA
Note: If you’d like to share your project with other educators, or know a teacher we should showcase on the Yahoo! For Teachers blog, just send an email to yteachersblog (at) yahoo (dot) com and let us know. We’re looking forward to hearing and sharing your projects with educators around the world.
WIRED Science Student Video Contest
WIRED Science and PBS are sponsoring a “WIRED Science Student Video Contest” that is open to all students in grades 9-12 (contest is also open to home school students).
This is an opportunity for students to work with their peers to create a video explaining a science concept, ideas on the future of science, or–well, anything else you think will help you snag the prize. Yes, there are prizes.
You can learn more about the contest, find the application form, along with all the details over on the WIRED Science Education page.
Don’t forget that Jumpcut has free, easy-to-use video editing tools. And if you need a refresher on copyright, be sure to check out CreativeCommons.
But hurry. Application and videos are due by April 1st, 2008. So hurry–grab that camera and get those creative juices flowing!
Derek
Yahoo! For Teachers Team
Related Resources
In Their Words: Earth Day…A 24 Hour Webcastathon
Educators and students from across the globe are planning a 24 hour long “Webcastathon” on Earth Day 2008 (Tuesday, April 22nd). Thanks to our good friends over at World Bridges, the audio from the conversations will be broadcast live at Edtechtalk.com/live.
The goal of the day is to share stories across the globe about what we’re doing to help better the health of our planet.
Our conversation will follow the 24 hour day in GMT time, which basically means we’ll be observing the day as it passes through Greenwich, England.
There are many ways that you and your students can participate right now. You may start contributing content by visiting the Earth Day Webcastathon planning page at: enviroscims.wikispaces.com/Earth+Day and leaving an audio comment on the two VoiceThread projects.
Or if you and your students publish any videos, pictures, podcasts or any other digital media online in the days and weeks leading up to Earth Day, be sure to tag them as, earthcast08, so we can aggregate the material in one central location.
Also, if you and your students would like to moderate an hour long block live (or even 30 minutes), there is still an opportunity to do so. You may fill up your time slot in any manner that you wish (interview scientists, local leaders, folks doing positive things in your community, etc)
Contact Matt Montagne at mjmontagne at gmail dot com if you’d like to moderate a portion of the day. Finally, if you’d simply like to listen in during the day, you can do so by visiting the Webcastathon planning page throughout Earth Day.
We’ll have a live, moderated chat room that we’ll be using to allow for greater participation.
We hope you and your students are able to join us is some capacity for the 24 Hour Earth Day Webcastathon!
Thanks!
The Earth Day 2008 24 Hour Webcastathon Planning Team
Note: If you’d like to share your project with other educators, or know a teacher we should showcase on the Yahoo! For Teachers blog, just send an email to yteachersblog (at) yahoo (dot) com and let us know. We’re looking forward to hearing and sharing your projects with educators around the world.
In Their Words: Many Voices For Darfur
Take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Elie Wiesel
In a way, we decided to take sides when we launched Many Voices for Darfur, a global collaboration project. Wendy Drexler and I asked our students an unsettling question: What is our responsibility to help end the genocide in Darfur? The answer we came up we with: spreading awareness.
So for 48 hours, starting at midnight EST on March 6th, many student voices will be collected in the name of those suffering in Darfur. We are asking k-12 students around the world to visit our Many Voices for Darfur blog and leave thoughtful, well-written comments. It is our hope that hundreds or even thousands of students will come together to help raise awareness about the first genocide of the 21st century.
Want to get involved? It’s incredibly easy to participate. Students simply visit the Many Voices for Darfur blog during the 48 hours and leave comments addressing one of the prompts listed on the homepage. For more detailed instructions, visit our Many Voices for Darfur Wiki. To learn more about Darfur, check out our Resources Wiki Page.
Mr. Moses, a teacher in Las Vegas, Nevada, made a short YouTube video describing the project for his students. He makes a request for multi-media projects that students could share and link to starting on March 6th.
Read what what others are writing about our project. For more information please contact me.
Mr. Mayo
8th Grade Language Arts Teacher
Rockville, MD
Related Resources
- Mr. Mayo Blog
- Flickr > tag > darfur
- Wikipedia > Darfur
- Yahoo! Teacher Document > Twitter Many Voices Project
Note: If you’d like to contribute your story or know a teacher we should showcase on the Yahoo! For Teachers blog, just send an email to yteachersblog (at) yahoo (dot) com and let us know. We’re looking forward to hearing and sharing your stories with educators around the world.
Celebrating Educational Blogging
Celebrating Educational Blogging is a fantastic project created by edublogger Steve Hargadon. It’s a mash-up using Blogger and VoiceThread.
Go check it out and get involved—add your audio, video or text story to the community VoiceThread and share with colleagues around the world how you incorporate blogging into your classroom!
Related Links
- Support Blogging
- Yahoo! Teachers Group > BloggingEDU
- Students 2.0 Blog
- Wes Fryer > BloggingEDU
- Yahoo! For Teachers > Twitter
Derek
Yahoo! For Teachers Team
Yahoo! For Teachers 101: Project Points
Did you know that when you search for a project in Explore, the project(s) with the highest number of points are displayed at the top of your search results? Yes, it’s true. But you may be asking yourself: What are these points? And where do they come from?
Here’s the scoop…
The number next to the star is the project rating. The number equals the total number of teachers who have copied the project or left feedback for the author.
These project points will help you gauge both the reputation and quality of a project and/or author. This built in system of “peer review” helps push the highest rated projects to the top of the Yahoo! For Teachers Explore results.
Here’s how to leave feedback on a Yahoo! For Teachers Project:
- Click > “I like this project” button
- Write > Use the default message, or leave your own feedback, tips or suggestions
- Click > “Send My Comment”
You can view comments left by your colleagues by scrolling to the bottom of the project page and hovering your mouse over your icon. To learn more about the colleague who left a comment, click on their name and see what resources and projects they have in their portfolio.
So go ahead and copy projects or leave feedback on your colleagues’ projects! Doing so will help make the Explore results more relevant, save you time, and help build a vibrant and robust community for teachers, by teachers!
If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to post your question over in our Yahoo! For Teachers group.
Derek
Yahoo! For Teachers Team
Wanna Work Together?
This video is a great introduction to Creative Commons. I learned about this video from one of the amazing teachers attending the Yahoo! Teachers workshop in New York City a few weeks ago. Thanks Mr. Circe!
Resources
Road Report: Yahoo! For Teachers Workshops
I just thought I’d give you an update on what the Yahoo! Teachers team has been up to the last few hectic weeks!
June 17: We held a Yahoo! Teachers workshop for teachers in the San Jose/Evergreen School District. This was a great event and they were really impressed with Yahoo! Teachers and the Gobbler.
June 22: The entire Yahoo! Teachers team headed to Atlanta to attend NECC 2007! This is the largest educational computing conference in the country and we met teachers from all over the country.
Our booth was jammed packed with teachers wanting to see the Gobbler in action! This was a great week and our first big showing of Yahoo! For Teachers!
We had a great time in Atlanta. Bill’s edict is that we “eat local” when we travel. One of the highlights of the trip was our team dinner at Gladys Knight Chicken and Waffles. We were a little tired and slap happy, so this made it even more fun.
We had a great bounty of Southern goodness on our table: fried chicken, waffles, collard greens, mac and cheese, fried corn, oh fresh lima beans and of course sweet tea! Being Yahoos, the moment our food arrived we whipped out our cameras so we could Flickr our food before we ate it!
July 2: Off to the windy city! Our Yahoo! Teachers Chicago workshop was held at the University of Chicago. We had a wonderful group of teachers from around Illinois attend the workshop. We also had several teachers from NECC come to the workshop.
One of the most amazing new Yahoo! Teachers drove all the way from Alabama to attend the workshop. Karon and I were floored and honored that she would make that long drive to learn more about Yahoo! for Teachers. Again, we had some terrific projects come out of this workshop.
July 11: The Big Apple welcomed Yahoo! Teachers and we held two workshops at the NYC Yahoo! HQ. This was an amazing cadre of educators from all over the region. Teachers came from Maryland, Delaware, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York.
We met several educators who are blogging about technology in the classroom and using social media in interesting and innovative ways to support learning in the classroom.
We were also thrilled to have Sue Wright and Greg Crum join us at our NYC workshops. They were great advocates for Yahoo! Teachers and they had a great time meeting colleagues from the other side of the country! Thanks Greg and Sue!
July 13: After a whirlwind couple of days in NYC, Karon and I headed off to Washington D.C. to present Yahoo! for Teachers to the American Federation of Teachers. Our group of teachers hailed from Minnesota, Montana, DC, Virginia and New York.
In fact, we had standing room only and left with a long list of teachers who want to sign up as alpha teachers. We were thrilled to have such a positive reception from the AFT community.
Speaking of the AFT, they have a lot of great resources on their site, including resources to help educators teach about the crisis in Darfur.
July 16: Karon and I headed to San Francisco to attend the YPulse Mashup. This is a conference that focuses around how tweens and teens use technology.
We were thrilled to share Yahoo! Teachers with the Mashup crowd and show how educators can use Yahoo! Teachers to connect with other teachers and gain the skills and confidence they need to use 21st century tools in their classrooms.
We had the honor to meet with Lisa and Pearl from the Schwab Learning Foundation. This is a wonderful organization that provides information and resources to teachers/kids/parents on learning difficulties (LD).
They have a wonderful site, including an online library, full of articles, research and other information to help students with learning difficulties. They have a special site for kids called, SparkTop , where kids with LD can come and connect with other kids
We also presented Ben Wilkoff, a teacher from Denver, Colorado, with the first Yahoo! Teachers/Edutopia Totally Wired Teacher Award. Congrats to Ben!
July 17: Hey Austin! Here we come…….Wendy Heller, Karon and I headed off to Austin to hold a workshop at the University of Texas @ Austin. Wow. Talk about totally wired! The teachers at the Austin workshop were very tech savvy and caught the vision of Yahoo! Teachers in a big, big way.
Then again, everything–including vision–is big in Texas!
All work and no play? No way. While in Austin we checked out the Story of Texas state history museum and tracked down the best BBQ join in Austin. Where? That would be Iron Works. Yum. Yum. Yum.
Where next? That would be San Diego! On Saturday we will be holding our final summer workshop at the Joan Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice at the University of San Diego.
We come off this workshop and conference tour with a newfound appreciation for all the wonderful educators out there who are striving every day in the classroom to help their students acquire the knowledge and skills they will need to be contributing members of society.
Stay tuned, we are just getting started…….
Cheers!
Derek, Karon and the entire Yahoo! Teachers team
Related Resources
Yahoo! Teachers Workshops: Scenes from the Road
Karon and I are having a great time meeting teachers from all over the country at our Yahoo! For Teachers workshops.We have met a lot of really fantastic, inspiring teachers.
They have given us a lot of great feedback on Yahoo! For Teachers and are rapidly learning how to bring 21st Century skills into their classrooms.
Yahoo! For Teachers + Yahoo! Groups
We have a new public Yahoo! Group set up for Yahoo! Teachers. This group will be the main hub for our new community. Think of it as a virtual teachers lounge where you can get the latest Yahoo! Teachers buzz, share ideas and connect with other educators just like you!
And it’s free! So what are you waiting for? Join us today!
