NSTA ‘08: Celebrating Science Education
This week the Yahoo! For Teachers Team will join science teachers from around the country at the National Science Teacher Association (NSTA) Annual Conference in Boston to learn what’s new and exciting in the world of science education.
We’re looking forward to reconnecting with teachers we met last year at the 2007 NSTA Annual Conference in St. Louis and can’t wait to meet up with more amazing educators this year.
We’ve set up a special NSTA 2008 Group on Flickr and invite all educators attending NSTA 2008 to share their pictures and conference memories with their colleagues.
Derek
Yahoo! For Teachers Team
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
New Release Notes
Last night we pushed a new release of Yahoo! For Teachers Beta. In addition to fixing several bugs, we also added the following new features:
+ You can now publish Yahoo! Teacher Documents outside the closed beta so that you can share them with your colleagues.
+ When you drag images, text or web sites into a Yahoo! Teacher Document, a “Sources” list for the Gobbled assets will automatically be generated and displayed at the bottom of the page.
+ On the Explore page, the Top Rated, Most Copied, and Most Recent project box now displays the author’s name and provides a link to their portfolio. This improvement will help you discover new projects as well as new colleagues to add to My Community.
+ When a colleague leaves feedback on your project page, you can click on their name to view their Yahoo! For Teachers ePortfolio and see what projects they are sharing with the community. You can then add them as a colleague, copy a project or project asset.
Thanks to everyone for reporting bugs and continuing to provide us with suggestions on how we can make Yahoo! For Teachers even better. We really appreciate your feedback–keep it coming!
Derek
Yahoo! For Teachers Team
Downtime Notice
This morning we discovered a wee little bug that is preventing new users from registering with Yahoo! For Teachers. Please know that our crack engineering team is working to resolve the issue and I’ll be posting updates here to keep you all in the loop.
In the meantime, why not check out our Yahoo! For Teachers community outposts on Flickr, Yahoo! Groups or Jumpcut?
Derek
Yahoo! For Teachers Team
Update, Monday January 14
6:32 PST: The bug is squished! Our brilliant engineering team has fixed the registration glitch. If you’ve received an invite to join Yahoo! For Teachers and were unable to register, you’re all set to have another go at it. If you experience any problems, be sure to let us know.
Try the new Yahoo! Search
So did you hear? Yahoo! Search has new features designed to help you save time and find exactly what you’re looking for. Check out these video demos to learn more!
And if you’re looking for a plain white search box, Yahoo! has one of those too!
Derek
Yahoo! For Teachers
Twitter + Yahoo! For Teachers: Who Let the Owl Out?
It appears that Earl, our Yahoo! For Teachers spokesowl, has discovered the joys of Twitter. And even though he would much rather “hoo” than “tweet“– he still thinks Twitter is pretty slick.
He’s agreed use Twitter as a way to keep everyone up-to-date with breaking community news, links to useful resources along a few random bits of information.
You can follow Earl by clicking here:
http://twitter.com/yahooteachers
Related Resources
Derek
Yahoo! For Teachers
Totally Wired: Book Tour 2007
Anastasia Goodstein is an award-winning blogger and expert on how American tweens, teens and twentysomethings use technology. She is also the creative genius behind the Ypulse blog and Ypulse Mashup conferences (including the Tween Mashup in NYC this month).
Most recently she is the author of a book about teens and technology called Totally Wired: What Teens and Tweens are Really Doing Online.
In her book Anastasia explores what Gen Y is doing on the Internet and with social media and mobile technology. She also delves into issues around cyberbullying, MySpace (and other social networks), as well as how all this technology is impacting schools and educators.
Anasatasia, thanks to the folks over at Proctor & Gamble, is going on a fall book tour. In addition to being incredibly knowledgeable in how teens are using technology, she is also keenly aware of how technology is being (or not) integrated in the classroom to support these burgeoning digital learning styles.
From personal experience, I can tell you that Anastasia is an engaging and interesting speaker who has the ability to explain (in real English, not geek speak!) how teens use technology, as well as the benefits and drawbacks of their total immersion in technology.
If you have the opportunity to hear her speak, please do so! You’ll be glad you did.
Related Resources
- Schedule > Totally Wired Book Tour
- Powell’s Books > Totally Wired
- Totally Wired Blog
- Proctor & Gamble > Being A Girl
- YPulse Blog
- YPulse Tween Mashup
- YPulse Mashup 07
Derek
Yahoo! For Teachers
Yahoo! For Teachers: Something to talk about
Last week it seemed like everytime we turned around, someone was saying something nice about Yahoo! For Teachers.
We couldn’t be more thrilled to read all the nice things people are saying about us and we are working hard to get Yahoo! For Teachers into the hands of as many educators as soon as possible.
In the meantime, if you haven’t already, be sure to sign up for an invite, put yourself on the Peer Network Map, and join our official Yahoo! For Teachers group.
You can also check out what people are saying about us:
- SF Chronicle: Yahoo! Teachers enables teachers to share lesson plans, ideas and more
- Ars Technia: Hacking Education with Yahoo! Teachers
- WebProNews: Yahoo! Teachers shaping up nicely
Derek
Yahoo! For Teachers
AT&T Education: Four Stars for Jumpcut!
Jumpcut, the free suite of video editing and remixing tools, was recently featured as the AT&T Education Hot Site of the Week! Many thanks to our friends at AT&T Education for featuring Jumpcut.
Come join the Jumpcut + Yahoo! For Teachers group and share your video project and clips with other educators. Jumpcut is Yahoo! too, so if you already have a Yahoo! ID, you’re all set to go!
Related Resources
Derek
Yahoo! For Teachers
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
