Alan November is an international leader in education technology. Here are some ideas from his presentation.

Student as Contributor:
We’ve underestimated student learning. Assumption: Every teacher is a learner and every student is a teacher.

You can improve teachers without improving learning.

Enlist students to be designers for your lessons. At the end of the year, every teacher will have video tutorials to use from year to year. Each year, students will improve these podcasts. Students listen to their peers explain a concept.

Caution! This is a shift of control in the classroom. Kids should be working harder than the teacher.

Staff Development should also include a couple of students to learn also.

Students as contributors provides the motivation needed to achieve. Purpose is the motivator for learning. What’s the purpose of children’s work? Grades are not enough motivation.

Check out: http://www.mathtrain.tv students creating tutorials through screencasting.

www.techsmith.com Download Jing free and easy to create podcasts.

Screencasting can be started in elementary school.

We need to stop looking at and calling assignments projects.

Every week students can produce a documentary of what was learned in class this week. At the end of the year, you have a documentary of what was learned all year. Let the students tell the world!

Students need an authentic audience. Don’t underestimate what students can produce.

Motivation – purpose…where’s the purpose? Who is the audience? Audience matters.

Use Itunes in the classroom

Students may ask to produce their own show on a particular topic studied in class. They can be referred to as corners. For example: Writing With Emily. Include it as part of what was learned in class.

An authentic audience might be: Tell students that some people in a local nursing home “can’t get out” and tell their stories. Students can email the questions and receive responses through the Nursing Home. Add digital photos and video. The answered questions can become the narration using voice over as the video plays. Students are using and developing writing skills for a large audience in this exercise.

Visit a nursing home. Adopt a nursing home.

Students need to understand authentic audience. Help them expand their social boundaries.

Create a global communication team: connect to the world. Find teachers that teach your subject in other parts of the world. Connect with a teacher and class in another part of the world. Ask Mr. Greene!

Just because students are taking notes in class does not mean the notes are quality. Create a quality control team of 3 students that take notes. Divide the note taking into 3 columns. Example: websites, projects, design ideas. At the end of class review out loud what the 3 students have recorded. Make corrections at that time. Other students will also contribute. Put the notes into Google docs and ask students if the notes are complete. www.docs.google.com (word processing, power point, etc. free and constantly updated.

Save your documents in the clouds. Documents on your computer slow down the computer. You can access your documents from any computer. No more jump drives. Very cool.

To understand twitter watch this video: www.commoncraft.com/twitter

www.twitterfall.com: Find friends or colleagues that you would like to follow.
Hashtags used in twitter defined as #(tag). Content-oriented people may think of a hashtag as a virtual folder.

www.hashtags.org includes a hashtag directory. It also tracks the hottest and newest hashtags, usage report on any hashtag and more. Example: You can follow people in the field of education such as social studies anywhere in the world.

Twitter is blocked by MCS. Memphis City Schools could set up District hashtags and teachers in the system could tweet: Tweet Deck

Someone you might be interested to follow on Twitter: David Weinberger, a Harvard, web education genius. It’s interesting to see who he is following: check out Readwriteweb RWW

If you want to follow David Weinberger: www.twitter.com/dweinberger

Project for students: Follow 10 of the best minds in the world right now(Obama etc.). Then recommend that they see who these great people are following on twitter. You’ve given your students a gift. A lifelong capacity to find the best minds.

One of the best speeches for students to watch: J. K. Rowlings Harvard speech entitled “The Fringe Benefits of Failure.”

Why wouldn’t we tap the minds of the smartest people living today? Not to teach students how to self direct their learning is a crime. “The rich will get richer and the poor will get poorer.”

Students are social beings. They use all of the social media sites at home.

How to have global researchers: Go to googlemaps.com, find a location of interest, drop the little gold man onto the street and see the street scene.

History assignment: Drop in Jing and become the on the street narator using google maps and Jing together.

If you want to use Skype in a blocked area, download it on your flash drive.

Teach children to zoom around the world.

History lesson: Research teachers in England and see what they say about the American Revolution: site: Teachers UK. How does their version differ from ours? Teach global empathy. Find 10 teachers in the UK that study the American Revolution and email them. Share points of view.

Check out: www.coolcatteacherblogspot.com   by Vicki Davis

We need to be careful of the automating mindset known as the $1,000 pencil plan. Don’t add tech to what you are already doing in the classroom. You will see no improvement. Example: Using projectors like an overhead projector. Plan to make a difference with technology or save your money.

Some ideas to remember:

Informating: We have access to global communication. Students can access information they’ve never had available through the web.

Relationships: Children are social beings…Facebook is number one. They are telling us loudly that they want connections.  Do we have the right relationships  with our students and parents?

Empowerment: Teach students self-direction. The longer you stay in school, the more dependent you become.  Children must own the learning.

In the US, teachers work much harder than the students. China is the opposite.

Unblocking Free Resources for Educational Excellence: Valuing the Silver Lining in Cloud Computing

http://free-mstc.ning.com Click on Dr. Moody’s mtsc 2010 Google presentation

Try www.Pandora.com 40 hours a month of free music. Classical music frees the mind for learning.

NING: Registration: http://www.ning.com Register for free educational sholarship: http://about.ning.com/pearsonsponsorship  Ning is facebook -like.

** Teachers, you can access Youtube videos through Gaggle!! Youtube has videos on everything you could possible need. http://memphis.gaggletn.com 

Screencast-o-matic  www.screencast-o-matic.com

www.lovelycharts.com  Purchase

www.youtube.edu  is blocked…try www.teachertube.com

www.google.com/chrome

Animate book reports: www.scratch.mit.edu

Picasa web: Save all of your pictures for free in one site in the “clouds.” Photos slow down your computer so put them in the clouds. This site is blocked and you will need to access from home.